ENGLISH AND AMERICAN FARM MACHINERY.

Temuka Leader, Issue 241, 11 March 1880, Page 2

ENGLISH AND AMERICAN FARM MACHINERY.

American manufactures of farm tools shape them in such away as to do the work with the least physical labour 1 The English manufacturer, on the other hand, has a pride in making everything substantial, heavy and solid, without any regard to the weight or strengt t needed. Why there is more wood and 1 iron in an English farm cart than fi Would niake tv.o American carts, and yet, with their superb roa Is, they load their’s ho heavier thah vve do ours. , A manure fork is of the same size and pattern it was half a c m fairy ago—i square, rough tine# shouldered near the point—calling for the greatest amount of force in loading or unlba ling. The American fork i& a round, polish td tine, tapering gradually from the point to the base, and calling for tin least pow>r. The weight of an English plough is at least three times that of ours, and its length about twice, and yet it tvkos neither cider nor deeper furrow slices than our best ploughs. In fact, one Vi: pair of horses attached to one of-* our best pattern ploughs will do from a •Jura t > a hal F more work in the garni number of hours than an English fann-tr with his long unwieldy is ■>ut of all proportion, both in length and weight, to the work it is int nided f-r] The same i& true of the English harrowi# cultivators, and all of the impleme its I found in comm»a use for turning or cu’tivsting the soil. Tin o-dinarj wooden hand-rake is a clumsy, heavy thing having from a third to a half rao*9 wood than is actually necessary. In x many instances, it, going through ' England, I have counted eight *nd ten ■ hands gathering hay into windrows with these hand rakes, an ■" seldom, if ever seen now in united States. In many of tho agricultural districts which I visile 1 farm rs cultivating from forty ’.o a hundr -d acres of land still continue to cut their grain grain crops with tho reaping hook and cradle. The English cradle has a j scythe-blade of or Hn*ry size and length# I with two short wooden fingers ; tho grain around against the uncut standing grain. Another ma i follows the cradler, equipped‘With a piece of st ok about three fed in length with an in n hook on the end of it and gathers the cut grain into sheafs and places them on tho stubbie before the next swath can be cut j the American, or what is coifitrionly g culled the “ Yankee ’ cradle has a wide scythe-blade similar in size 'and length to tho English, hut instead of two short fingers it has four-long ones, and tho operator cuts the grain, whic falls and 1 which is thrown into a sheaf on tho • stubble, entirely out of tho way of the ! cradler who follows, leaving the cot ! grain ready to be bound, one man with ; us doing the work of two in England. ! In talking on the subp-ct with an intelligent fanner in Essex County, England, Iliad a difficulty in convincing . him that the long fingers of the “ Yankee cradle woil'd not or • cuiil I nof get j : tangled lip in the “Straw, nor, could I induce him to £eml and get an American i cradlei although he v wajP com >laimng I of the high price of farm' labour when ' compared with the low price of farm I produce.