Engineering Wonders of the World
Volume III

AGRICULTURAL ENGINEERING. 293 mole runs,” main drain. is carried to the land the drains cut by the keep open for more than Even if the operation has to Seeding and Planting Machines. in front and drawing behind it, by a short chain, an egg-shaped tail which consolidates the sides of the drain. This machine proves most effective in land which has a slight natural slope. If no suitable ditch exists already, a main drain is dug by hand along the lower side of the field, and at regular intervals on the uphill side of the drain are cut small excavations, called “ eyes,” to act as starting-points for the mole drainer. As it approaches the uphill boundary the mole is raised gradually to the surface a by means of self-acting gear. When the drain cutting is complete, the eyes and main drain are filled in with tiles. The surface water finds its way down through the vertical slits cut by the share into the and by them In very stiff machine will twenty years. be repeated at lesser periods, the accumulated cost of several repetitions is much, smaller than that of laying pipes, and is much more effective. After the ploughing, the seeding. Machine drills have—in highly civilized countries, at any late—entirely superseded broadcast sow- ing of corn and small seed by hand. The machine does its work with a regularity that cannot be approached by human agency. Special devices are used for planting beans and potatoes. The bean planter drills a hole, drops in a bean, and covers it up. The potato is treated in a similar manner, after having been cut up into halves or quarters, if the farmer so wishes. Then there are the machines for setting young plants, for weeding, for loosening or gathering root crops, many of them so exact in their operation that they seem almost to be en- dowed with intelligence. Next we come to the reaping machines, MOLE DRAINER, WITH TYNE AT WORK. which are perhaps the most interesting of all agricultural implements. Though on many farms, especially on small ones, the horse-drawn plough is stil] Reaping . „ . . . ® . Machines, used tor cultivation, when it comes to reaping the primitive scythe and sickle are employed only when conditions prevent the employment of a machine. Almost eighty years have now passed since Cyrus H. M‘Cormick, the son of a Virginian farmer, produced his first reaper with a many- bladed cutter bar vibrated rapidly to and fro between steel teeth by gearing driven off the ground wheels—such as is still used for mow- ing hay. The Hussey reaper, a somewhat similar device, appeared a couple of years later, and for a decade the two rivals com- peted against each other in all parts of the States. Then M‘Cormick developed his device a stage further by adding a platform to catch the grain until sufficient had been collected to form a sheaf, when it was swept off by a rake. The inventor received special recogni- tion at the Great Exhibition held in London in 1851, as one who had done signal services to the cause of agriculture. Yet farmers, notoriously conservative as they are, looked askance at the invention, although its effi- ciency was demonstrated under their very eyes. As they could not understand it fully, and it was so far in advance of any mechanism