A NEW "HARVESTING. APPARATUS."

Globe, Volume XXIV, Issue 2694, 25 November 1882, Page 4

A NEW "HARVESTING. APPARATUS."

A correspondent writes to the " Pall Mall Gazette'': —lt has for some years been a popular subject whether some change cannot be brought about in the direction of securing our corn crops in wet seasons by a batter means than that which time out of mind has been adopted. Covering the stocks in the field has been suggested; but tho co.-t of this is an effectual bar to such a policy being pursued. That some change is earnestly to be desired no one will gainsay, for wet harvests aro a great national loss. It is not generally known that the Americans have made themselves independent of these wet seasons by using harvesting machinery which cuts off aud collects only the heads of the corn, which are afterwards garnered into sheds or barns. The straw is not a consideration, being generally left and burned on the land, the ash as potash forming a fertilizer. The objection to the adop.' tion of this system in England is very great, from the fact that the straw is an article of value, the uses of ■which are manifold. Admiring the American system, but seeing that such was inapplicable to this country, I deemed it hopeless to effect a .change, until, by accident, I found a friend who, so far as I can judge, has solved the problem, which will render the British farmer independent of wet seasons. This is brought about by a machine, a modification of the two national systems —the English and the American—the invention of Mr Henry Kitchin Stone, of Hull. This Harvesting Apparatus is a double reaper, an upper and a lower, the former adjustable to any height or inequality of the corn. The upper reaper is designed to travel first and to cut off the heads of tho standing corn, and to collect them in a basket in the rear of the machine. Tho lower reaper follows and deals ■with the headless straw and the bottom herbage, which, after the manner of a grass crop, is cut and left on the land, wh.'re it may be dealt with in case of need "by the hay-making machines, and collected as a grass crop.