"Is the machine liable to derangement and destruction from its own motion? "This is a question which cannot be so directly answered as the others. We have only used the machine to cut about fifty acres, and have had no trouble; judging from appearances so far, should say it was as little subject to this evil as any machinery whatever. The wear upon the cutting part being so little as to require not more than fifteen minutes sharpening in a day; there is no loss of time on this score. "Is the sheaf a good one to thresh? "The man who has fed the threshing machine with the grain of twenty acres cut by this machine, says the sheaves are much better than those of cradled grain, and quite as good as those of a reaper. "There is one more advantage beyond ordinary inquiries, of consequence, where so much grain is raised as in this valley; be the grain ever so ripe, there is no waste of grain by any agitation of the straw, and all the waste which can take place must arise from the handling and shaking in binding. "I am yours, etc., "WM. C. DWIGHT. "Moscow, Livingston Co., N. Y., Nov. 14, 1834. "N. B.--The machine we used was intended only for upland, but by some little alterations and additions we used it with equal facility on all kinds of soil; and it can be used on any farm so clean from stumps and stones as not to endanger the blocking the wheels." The following letter is evidence for 1835, and also refers to the originality of the invention by O. Hussey. "Palmyra, Mo., Aug. 14, 1854. "Friend Hussey--Yours duly received. As to the machines sent by you (ordered some two years since) they both worked well. "Before you had invented your machine in 1831 or 1832, your attention was drawn to a mode of cutting grain, hemp and grass and you told me you thought you could invent such a machine to be drawn by horses; and after you had returned to Cincinnati from Laurenceburg you wrote me a letter in '32 or at the furthest in '33 (for I left Indiana 2nd Oct., 1833) with a draft and description of a plan for cutting grain. The draft was thus (here follows a diagram of the cutting apparatus exactly as described by the patent) and the description was, that these knives were to work by the motion of the wheels, being a perfect description of the invented principle. "As soon as I saw the plan, I was satisfied of its success and wrote to you that there was no doubt of the success of your machine; that it was astonishing the world had so many thousand years been confined to the sickle when so obvious a mode of cutting grain and grass existed; and shortly after you obtained a patent for the machine.