REAPING TWENTY SQUARE MILES OF WHEAT.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 2, Issue 342, 17 December 1879, Page 2

REAPING TWENTY SQUARE MILES OF WHEAT.

The poetry of the harvest field will have to be re-written. A correspondent of the Chicago Tribune furnishes the rough materials for one canto. "Just think," he says "of a sea of ™ a ' containing twenty square miles—ld.ooo acres-rich, ripe, golden; the winds rippling over it. As far as the eye can see there is the same golden sunset [rule Faraway on the horizon you behold an army sweeping along in grand; procession. Riding on to meet it you see'. a major-general on horseback—the superintendent ; two brigadiers on horseback: -repairers. No swords flash in the sunlight, but their weapons are monkey wrenches and hammers. No brass band, no drum beat or shrill note of the fife, but the army moves on-a solid phalanx ot twenty-four self-binding reapers-to the music of its own machinery. At one sweep, in a twinkling, a swath of 192 ft has been cut and bound-the reapers tossing the bundles almost disdainfully in the air-each binder doing the work of six men. In all there are 115 self-binding reapers at work. About 400 men are employed, and during thrashing 900—their wages being 2 dols. a day with board."