operated to the satisfaction of the assembly, perhaps owing to the
badness of the weather and its effects on the draggled, unripe grain.
With McCormick's a very different result was obtained. This machine is
so well known in our Wheat-growing districts that I need only remark
that it is the same lately ridiculed by one of the great London journals
as "a cross between an Astley's chariot, a treadmill and a flying
machine," and its uncouth appearance has been a standing butt for the
London reporters at the Exhibition. It was the ready exemplar of
American distortion and absurdity in the domain of Art. It came into the
field at Mechi's, therefore, to confront a tribunal (not the official
but the popular) already prepared for its condemnation. Before it stood
John Bull, burly, dogged and determined not to be humbugged--his
judgment made up and his sentence ready to be recorded. Nothing
disconcerted, the brown, rough, homespun Yankee in charge jumped on the
box, starting the team at a smart walk, setting the blades of the
machine in lively operation, and commenced raking off the grain in
sheaf-piles ready for binding,--cutting a breadth of nine or ten feet
cleanly and carefully as fast as a span of horses could comfortably
step. There was a moment, and but a moment of suspense; human prejudice
could hold out no longer; and burst after burst of involuntary cheers
from the whole crowd proclaimed the triumph of the Yankee "treadmill."
That triumph has since been the leading topic in all agricultural
circles. _The Times'_ report speaks of it as beyond doubt, as placing
the harvest absolutely under the farmer's control, and as ensuring a
complete and most auspicious revolution in the harvesting operations of
this country. I would gladly give the whole account, which, grudgingly
towards the inventor, but unqualifiedly as to the machine, speaks of the
latter as "securing to English farming protection against climate and an
economy of labor which must prove of _incalculable_ advantage." Pretty
well for "a cross between an Astley's chariot, a flying machine and a
treadmill."

Mr. McCormick, I hear, is probably now on his way hither from the United
States, and will be rather astonished on landing to find himself a lion.
Half a dozen makers and sellers of Agricultural implements, are already
on the watch for him, and if he makes his bargain wisely, he is morally
sure of a fortune from England alone. His machine and its operator were