THE TRIAL OF REAPERS AND BINDERS AT DERBY.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LVI, Issue 6473, 25 November 1881, Page 6

THE TRIAL OF REAPERS AND BINDERS AT DERBY.

The trial of (ho reapers and binders at Derby, in connection with the Boyal Society’s Show, does not seem to have been a very satisfactory affair. The Engineer says the trials of sheaf-binding machines at Derby have not given satisfaction. Of this there con no longer be any doubt. The dissatisfaction is not confined to the competitors 5 on the contrary, there is reason to think that it is widespread, and includes all the agriculturists of tne country who have token an interest in the proceedings of the Boyal Agricultural Society and of its judges. No one asserts that the trials were unfair os between the competitors, or that (hoy were not carried out with every possible care by the judges and engineers. The prominent defect is to be found in the foot that the conditions under which the trials of the competing machines were made were adverse. In other' the (rials wore not calculated to supply the information which (he judges ought to have possessed before they pronounced their verdict. It is fully understood that the sheaf-binding reaping machine is the most complex and expensive implement ever put into a harvest field. Durability, in the sense of power to work through a harvest season without requiring much if any repair, is an essential qualification in such machines as those tried at Derby. Capacity on the part of the sheaf-binder for working withont the aid of skilled attendants is hardly less necessary. On neither point did the Derby trials elicit any information whatever. The machines during theexper roents made with them were in cue hands >1 their inventors or the skilled representatives of the inventors, and the tost conditions were therefore very unlike those under which the reaper would be actually worked in BngUsh earn fields. Again, the duration of the trials was ridiculously short; the aggregate duty done by any of them did not much exceed about hair a day’s work, A good sheaf binder will do 10 aores a day in a heavy crop, and as much as twelve aores may be got through. The total quantity oat by each machine at Derby consisted of half an acre of oats, half an acre of barley, half an acre of wheat, two sores of light wheat two more acres of oats, and two acres of heavy wheat, or in all seven and a half aores of corn. Several day* were spent in doing this, end we do not hesitete to cay that

iuch » test could not supply adequate Informatlon to the Judges M to the durability of the machines triad. Bat thi» »u not all —the oom mu for the moat part cat while wringing wet j thfttia to say. under conditions which wold not possibly exist in ragular farm work. Wa hare heard it urged In favour of the trials that the more adverse the conditions the more severe the teat | hot such an argoment poeeatees no force whatever, it might ae wall be edvaoeed that by running a locomotive on a hard paved road a good idsa eoold be gained of it* power* of working on a railway. It is, no doubt, proper that machinery should, when tried at all, bo tried with dae severity j but anleae the trial take# place under working conditions ite results can possess little or no value. Thus it would have been quite fair to teat the machines triad at Darby in fields of vary heavy corn, full of grass at the roots; hot It was not legitimate to test them in corn saturated with rain, and daring a h«avy downpour of rain. There are thousands of self-binding reaping maebinee in use in the United States which could not work in heavy, tall English crops % and tbs weight of the crops out may, with strict propriety, be used m a factor in appraising the value of a sheafbinder | but to cut wet corn, and to use in any waythc power of the machine to deal with corn in a shower, is simply absurd, because no farmer in his senses would think of working a machine in wet com and a torrent of rain. Furthermore, it is by no means certain, or even approximately certain, that it is more difficult to bind wot corn th»a dry. Indeed, the chances sue that the straw, lying closer and heavier when wot than dry, may be more readily bundled and tied than it would be if fit for cutting. When thatch is being mads or “ pulled," the straw is always wsttecL to make It lie close and take the spring out of it, and, reasoning by analogy, it seams not improbable that wet earn may be more easily dealt with than dry by a sheaf-binding machine.