"Dear Sir:—Some months ago I received a letter from you, making enquiries of me relative to Hussey's Reaping Machine. When your letter reached me I was on the eve of leaving home for the summer, and since my return home, my engagements have been of such a character as to cause me until the present to neglect replying to it.
"I have used one of Hussey's machines one season, and though under circumstances not very favorable for the machine, I take pleasure in stating that its operation was satisfactory. During my harvest, which was about three weeks' duration, this machine was kept constantly at work, with the exception of a day and a half, yet I did not ascertain how many acres it would reap. Mr. Collins, of Lake Scuppernong also used one last season, and from him I learned that he cut upwards of twenty acres a day.
"There is certainly much less wheat left in the field by one of these machines than is by the ordinary method of reaping by the scythe or reap hook; it cuts close, lays the straw smoothly, thus rendering tying of it in sheaves much easier.
"I have witnessed McCormick's, which I consider a poor affair, and meriting no consideration except a dissent from me. Many of this last kind of reaper found their way here a few years ago; they now, or rather their remains, may be seen lying in the field whence they will never be removed.
"THOS. D. WARREN."
Modern Rear-Delivery Reaper. (From "Who Invented the Reaper?" by R. B. Swift.)
From the Richmond Planter.
HUSSEY'S AND M'CORMICK'S REAPERS
"It is very painful to be compelled to inflict a private injury in the discharge of a public duty; upon a particular system of cultivation we can talk and write without restraint; but when we are called on to discuss the merits of an invention, upon which the fortunes of the originator may absolutely depend, it is a much more responsible and delicate office. We are aware, too, that in introducing a subject of the kind, we are opening the floodgates of a controversy that is often hard to close; we have had the strongest evidence of that fact in the controversy that once occurred in this paper between Messrs. McCormick and Hussey, and yet it is to the relative merits of the reaping machines of these two gentlemen that we are compelled again to draw the public attention. Probably not less than fifteen thousand dollars has been spent in Virginia this summer for reaping machines, and it becomes a subject of great importance to the wheat growing community at least, to ascertain how such a sum is annually to be dispensed to the greatest advantage. We shall express no opinion ourself in the discussion which must necessarily follow the introduction of this subject, and we would greatly prefer that neither of the gentlemen more particularly interested in the subject would appear in our columns. We will publish statements of facts for either, provided they are made over responsible names, and are short and permanent. As one of these facts we feel bound to state that we acted this year as the agent for McCormick's machine, and we have heard great complaint of the manner in which it was gotten up; but it is but fair also to state, that we believe Mr. McCormick himself has been superintending the manufacture of his machine in the State of New York, and that probably his work has not been as well done as it would have been could he have seen to it in person. The following communication is altogether in favor of Hussey's machine: