The trials were to be made upon oats, barley,
and wheat, and the plots for the preliminary trials were about half an
acre in extent. Shortly after half-past nine o'clock, the judges and
engineers of the society having arrived upon the ground, a start was
made upon the oats by the three machines belonging to Mr. Wood, Messrs.
Samuelson & Co., and the Johnston Harvester Company. It should, perhaps,
be mentioned that the strength of this crop of oats varied a good deal
in different parts of the field. These three machines all belong to the
class which has the automatic trip--that is, the binding gear is thrown
into action by the pressure of the straw accumulated arriving at a
certain value, independently of any special action on the part of the
driver. The sheaves from Messrs. Samuelson's machines were extremely
neat and well separated from each other, a point to which farmers attach
great importance.
It would appear that it is impossible to secure the binding of every
single sheaf. Here and there, even with the best binders, an occasional
miss will occur, in which the corn is thrown out unbound. However, with
Messrs Samuelson's machine this was extremely rare, and the neatness of
the sheaves produced was remarkable. No doubt the shortness of the crop
in the portion allotted to this machine may have had something to do
with this, as a longer straw is more likely than a shorter one to
connect two sheaves and produce that hanging together which in other
machines is so often observed to precede a miss in the binding.
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