The stripper is an Australian invention. It is a machine drawn through the ripe standing crop by three or four horses attached to its side. The horses walk in the stubble of the harvested portion. The ripe ears coming within reach of the machine, which has a 5-ft. cut, are gathered by a comb, and directed to a cutting plate, where the beater drum cuts them from the straw and threshes the grain out. At the same time the grain, with the chaff and some straw, is thrown into a receptacle at the back of the machine. When this is full the stripper is driven to a picked place in the paddock and emptied. Here a winnower has been placed, and the mixture of grain and rubbish out of the stripper is put through this winnower, which cleans and bags the wheat ready for market. In fair crops one winnower, with four men to work it, will keep two strippers going. The stripper-harvester is another Australian invention. It is an improvement on the stripper, and is now in more general use. It is really a combined stripper and winnower. It takes off the heads of wheat, and also threshes and cleans them as it goes along, and delivers the grain into bags at the side of the machine. This reduces the cost of harvesting, as less labour is required. Two men can work a harvester, one driving the machine while the other removes and sews up the bags. The machines cut 5 to 6 ft., but 8-ft. machines have proved successful of late, and with them a good area can be handled in a day. The smaller machine will strip about 10 acres of a fair crop in a working day. [Illustration: (1) STEAM THRESHER. (2) STOOK-BUILDING. (3) HARVEST PICNIC. (4) BALING FOR EXPORT. (5) STOOKS READY FOR CARTING.] WORKING THE WHEAT FARM. The settler having acquired his land, he will require to fence in his holding, and also subdivide it into convenient paddocks or fields. All Australian farms are fenced, and in districts in which the rabbit is a menace the boundary fences are wire-netted. Unless timber is very plentiful wire fences are almost universal. Posts, which are obtained from timber on the farm that is fallen, and split into the necessary lengths, are erected 9 or 11 ft. apart, with six or seven wires running through them. Sometimes the posts are put at a greater distance apart, and "droppers" placed between them at distances of 7 or 8 ft. Some of these droppers are of split timber, but patent droppers, made of wire and iron, can be obtained. Where timber is scarce such fences are cheaper. The droppers hold the wires to which they are attached in their place, but are not sunk into the ground. Fencing costs about $144.00 to $168.00 per mile. Netting the fences to keep out the rabbit costs an additional $192.00 to $240.00 per mile. If the new farm consists of improved, that is, cleared or partly cleared land, the settler will probably get his crop in before he does his fencing. It would be better for him to do that than leave his sowing till unduly late.