"'It is immaterial to the machine whether the speed be a walk, or trot; although a walk will make the most perfect work. My speed was a common walk, but a trot is sometimes necessary to counteract the effect of a strong wind when blowing from behind, in order to incline the grain backwards, on to the platform, to make good bundles. A quick walk is required to make good work in very short and scattering grain. The machine performs well, up or down hill, provided the surface be not too broken. By its compactness and ease of management, rocks, and stumps too high to be cut over, can be easily avoided. Although a rough surface is very objectionable, yet I have cut over very rocky ground with no material difficulty. I can say one thing which to some may appear incredible, but it is not the less true; the cutters of my machine have not been sharpened since I have had it; nor have I yet seen any appearance of a need of it in the quality of its work. How many harvests a machine would cut without sharpening is hard to say. I propose sharpening mine once a year only. I have used two horses at a time in the machine, and sometimes changed at noon; they worked it with ease, the draught being light. I took no account of what I cut in any one day, with this exception: in less than half a day I cut six acres, and was often detained for want of the requisite number of binders, by which much time was lost. My machine being something narrower than those generally made by Mr. Hussey, I could cut but about one acre in going two miles; this, at the moderate gait of two and a half miles per hour, would amount to twelve and a half acres in ten hours; and at four miles per hour, a speed at which the work is done in fine style, the amount would be twenty acres in ten hours. I should judge my quantity per day to range between ten and fifteen acres, yet I am decided in the opinion that I can cut twenty acres in a day, of good grain, on good ground, by the usual diligence of harvest hands, with a little increase of my usual speed, and a change of horses. Two hands are required to work the machine, a man to push off the grain and a boy to drive, besides a number of binders, proportioned to the quantity cut. As the machine can be drawn equally fast in heavy or light grain, the number of binders is necessarily increased in heavy grain, except an additional speed be given in light grain. Under every circumstance, the number of binders will vary from four to ten; and, when the usual care is practiced by the binders, there will be much less waste than in any other method of cutting. [Sidenote: A Labor-Saving Machine]