"In answer to your query, how your Reaping Machine worked in 1834, I have to say that it cut about sixteen acres of wheat for me on my farm; that it did the work in first rate style; according to my best recollection, as well as any of the machines that have since been introduced. The only objection I recollect being made, was, that when the straw was wet, or there was much 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?