--The machine we used was intended only for upland, but by
some little alterations and additions we used it with equal facility
on all kinds of soil; and it can be used on any farm so clean from
stumps and stones as not to endanger the blocking the wheels."

The following letter is evidence for 1835, and also refers to the
originality of the invention by O. Hussey.

"Palmyra, Mo., Aug. 14, 1854.

"Friend Hussey--Yours duly received. As to the machines sent by
you (ordered some two years since) they both worked well.

"Before you had invented your machine in 1831 or 1832, your
attention was drawn to a mode of cutting grain, hemp and grass and
you told me you thought you could invent such a machine to be
drawn by horses; and after you had returned to Cincinnati from
Laurenceburg you wrote me a letter in '32 or at the furthest in
'33 (for I left Indiana 2nd Oct., 1833) with a draft and
description of a plan for cutting grain. The draft was thus (here
follows a diagram of the cutting apparatus exactly as described by
the patent) and the description was, that these knives were to
work by the motion of the wheels, being a perfect description of
the invented principle.

"As soon as I saw the plan, I was satisfied of its success and
wrote to you that there was no doubt of the success of your
machine; that it was astonishing the world had so many thousand
years been confined to the sickle when so obvious a mode of
cutting grain and grass existed; and shortly after you obtained a
patent for the machine.

"On the 6th July, 1835, you brought to Palmyra two of your
machines, and they were put in operation near this place--one in a
meadow between here and Philadelphia, and one in the heavy grass
in Marion City bottom.[4] The machines did cut well. I was the
editor of the _Missouri Courier_, from the month of November,
1833, until 1838, and brought your machine before the public; it
excited much attention, and its performance was highly
satisfactory. The results of the trials were published in the
paper by me in August or September, 1835. I knew of the capacity
of the machine, and that it did so execute in the bottom three
acres an hour. In this I cannot be mistaken, for I felt at the
time the deepest interest in the success of the machine. Mr.
McElroy is dead, where you boarded, and al