m
farm to farm, and when the destination is reached, furnishes the power
to drive the thresher. Many of these engines are adapted to the use of
straw as fuel.

Another development was the combination harvester and thresher used on
the larger farms of the West. This machine does not cut the wheat close
to the ground, but the cutter-bar, over twenty-five feet in length,
takes off the heads. The wheat is separated from the chaff and
automatically weighed into sacks, which are dumped as fast as two expert
sewers can work. The motive power is a traction engine or else twenty to
thirty horses, and seventy-five acres a day can be reaped and threshed.
Often another tractor pulling a dozen wagons follows and the sacks are
picked up and hauled to the granary or elevator.

Haying was once the hardest work on the farm, and in no crop has
machinery been more efficient. The basic idea in the reaper, the
cutter-bar, is the whole of the mower, and the machine developed with
the reaper. Previously Jeremiah Bailey, of Chester County, Pennsylvania,
had patented in 1822 a machine drawn by horses carrying a revolving
wheel with six scythes, which was widely used. The inventions of
Manning, Hussey, and McCormick made the mower practicable. Hazard
Knowles, an employee of the Patent Office, invented the hinged
cutter-bar, which could be lifted over an obstruction, but never
patented the invention. William F. Ketchum of Buffalo, New York, in
1844, patented the first machine intended to cut hay only, and dozens of
others followed. The modern mowing machine was practically developed in
the patent of Lewis Miller of Canton, Ohio, in 1858. Several times as
many mowers as harvesters are sold, and for that matter, reapers without
binding attachments are still manufactured.

Hayrakes and tedders seem to have developed almost of themselves.
Diligent research has failed to discover any reliable information on the
invention of the hayrake, though a horserake was patented as early as
1818. Joab Center of Hudson, New York, patented a machine for turning
and spreading hay in 1834. Mechanical hayloaders have greatly
reduced the amount of human labor. The hay-press makes storage and
transportation easier and cheaper.

There are binders which cut and bind corn. An addition shocks the corn
and deposits it upon the ground. The shredder and husker removes the
ears, husks them, and shreds shucks, stalks, and fodder. Power shellers
separate grain and cobs more