"The end and design of the improvements above claimed is to prevent the blades choking." [Sidenote: McCormick Twelve Years Late] _En passant_, we would ask any intelligent and candid farmer or mechanic who has examined a successful reaper, to compare the foregoing plain specifications which all can understand, with the cutting apparatus of the most successful modern machine. And we would especially desire him to compare them in principle with the "improved form of fingers to hold up the corn, and an iron case to preserve the sickles from clogging;" not the alleged invention of 1831, by C. H. McCormick, and abandoned from 1840 to 1843, but the claims patented by him in 1845 [as stated in the letter to Philip Pusey, M. P.], twelve years after the date of Hussey's patent, and twelve years after his most complete and uninterrupted success in cutting both grain and grass. In fact, there was no year from and including 1833 up to 1854, a period of 21 years the past harvest, that we have not the most positive and conclusive evidence of the success of Hussey's reaper; in numerous cases the same machines had cut from 500 to 800, and even one thousand acres; in one instance, the same machine was used for fourteen harvests, or as many years, successively and successfully. [Sidenote: Canfield Testimonial] We have given some of the evidence for 1833. For 1834 we annex two letters giving an account of the two machines made this year, one in Illinois, and the other in New York, viz: "Spring Creek, Sangamon Co., Ill., "October 1st, 1854. "_Mr. Obed Hussey, Baltimore:_ "Dear Sir:--Your favor of August 10th came to hand a few days since. The reason was, it lay at Berlin (formerly Island Grove Post-office) and my Post-office address is Springfield, the only place where I call for letters. "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.