green grass among
the wheat, the blades would choke. You certainly demonstrated in
1834 the practicability of cutting grain or grass with horse-power;
and all the machines since introduced seem to have copied your machine
in all its essential features.

"I am respectfully yours,

"JOHN E. CANFIELD."

The next letter we copy from the _Genesee Farmer_ of December 6th, 1834.
The reader will readily perceive that the author, William C. Dwight, knew
how to handle the pen as well as the plow, and equally well to work the
reaper, being a practical farmer. But we are pained to add that he lost
his life by the fatal railroad accident at Norwalk, Ct., about a year
since.

From the Genesee Farmer, December 6, 1834.

"_To the Editor of the Genesee Farmer:_

"I wrote you last May that Mr. _Hussey_, the inventor of a
machine for harvesting wheat, had left in this village one of his
machines for the purpose of giving our farmers an opportunity to
test its value, and I promised to write you further about it when
it had been put to use. For many reasons which will not interest
either yourself or the public, the matter has been delayed till
the first rainy day, after my fall work was out of the way, should
give leisure to remember and fulfill my promise.

"The machine has been fully tried, and I am gratified to be able
to say that it has fully succeeded; hundreds of farmers from the
different towns of this and the adjoining counties have witnessed
its operations, and all have not only expressed their confidence
in its success, but their gratification in the perfection of the
work.

"As every inquirer asks the same series of questions, I presume
your readers will have a like course of thought, and wish for
satisfaction in the same particulars. To give them this, I will
write them in their order, and give the answers:

"Does the machine make clean work?

"It saves all the grain. To use the language of a gratified
looker-on, an old and experienced farmer, 'it cheats the hogs.'[3]

[3] The hogs are the gleaners in this section of country.

"Does the machine expedite the work?

"What the machine is capable of accomplishing, we who have used it
can hardly say, as we had no field in fit order, large enough for
a fair trial through a whole day; and can only say what it has
done. Five acres of