AMERICANS LEARNING FROM AUSTRALIA.

Hot Lakes Chronicle, Volume 3, Issue 144, 4 September 1895, Page 4

AMERICANS LEARNING FROM AUSTRALIA.

We seem to be swinging round to Australian fashions in gram harvesting (says the Pacific Rural Press), They would not take our great combined harvesters because of cost and numbers of animals required for locomotion, preferring their own "strippers." Now reports are current that local patterns of stripping machines are to be largely made on this coast. The Spokane Review tells of which it says will be largely used in Washingj ton. The machine is said to resemble a header. A cylinder armed with iron beaters is rigged to run in the place of the reel, and instead of cutting the grain, which would necessitate the handling of more or less straw, the heads are stripped off and the beaters thresh out the grain as it falls on the draper. It is then carried to a suction fan, which cleans the grain of chaff ae in an ordinary threshing machine. The grain is sacked and dumped iu piiea to be gatnered up by the hauling waggons. The machinery is operated by power furnished by a small gasoline engine, and the entire machine is fo light that four horses can pull it on ordinary level ground and six on the roughest farm land. Two men are all that are needed to operate it—one to drive the team and regulate the height of the sickle bar, and the other to attend to iho engine and sew the sackd, The machine was conceived and constructed by William Copper, who operated it last year with considerable success. It will start out this year with many improvements suggested by last year's experience and study. It is claimed that a machine of Ihis description can be put up for 300iol <r •lOOdol, and with it grain can be cut and threshed for about 50 cents au acre.