In order to give Mr. Gladstone the credit due him, it is proper to say that his reaper, like nine-tenths of the modern harvesting machines, was adapted to be drawn, and not pushed, as the implement of the Gauls was. Its cutting apparatus was extended well to the right, so that the horse drawing it might walk beside the grain to be cut. It was supported upon wheels, one at the outer extremity of the cutting apparatus, and the other substantially in the position now placed in harvesting machines, and his cutting devices were operated by it. His machine was not only adapted to cut the grain, but deliver it at one side in order to make a clear path of travel in cutting the next round.

His machine did not come into use, but was patented and thus made public. Whether practical in detail or not matters little, for he left to the world as a legacy the foundation principles of the reaping machine. Those who followed enriched the art only by additions and modifications.

A second patent was granted to him covering improvements. His machine might leave the grain in almost a continuous swath or in gavels, which depended only upon the number of raking devices applied to his rotary cutting apparatus.

In the patent granted to Salmon, who followed him in 1808, is found a grain receiving platform, differing in no respect from that of the early practical reaper, a cutting apparatus placed at its forward edge, a divider to separate the grain being cut from that left standing, and an orbitally moving rake adapted to remove the grain in gavels to the ground.

While it is of actual achievements that we shall mainly write, it is well to say that the actual achievement of the reaping machine was accomplished largely from knowledge given us by those early inventors, and it is proper that we point out precisely what they have taught us, for more than thirty machines have been patented in England and America before the machine of Bell, the Scotch preacher, of 1828, was placed upon the market in England.

Kerr, Smith and others added their mite of knowledge, and in 1822 Henry Ogle, an English schoolmaster, invented a reaping machine that was made by a Mr. Brown, and which cut one acre per hour. The trial was so successful that the laborers in the field, fearing the competition of the innovation, mobbed the inventor and maker and broke up the machine. The patent shows its construction.

The cutting apparatus of modern harvesting machines is a modified form of shears; in the early machines, shears, pure and simple, were arranged in series before the receiving platform. As cutting devices they operated well, but were objectionable on account of the fact that they did not clear themselves of shreds of straw and grass.

Bell's machine may be considered the first practical reaper, because in it was found the essential combination of mechanical elements, not only of the reaping machine, but largely of the modern self binding harvester. His machines were so successful that, as late as 1864, they were busy in the harvest fields of England, and laid a swath more perfect than any implement used before them; they were followed by a troop of girls, the like of which is still seen in the fields of those sections of England and Scotland where the modern self-binding harvester has not yet found its way.