11 AUGUST 1928, Page 12

NEW HARVESTERS.

Several novel machines will be seen at work in the present harvest. On one southern estate a tractor will pull a cutter- and-binder, behind which in turn will be hitched a disc harrow. The usual stage of a level stubble, following the growing corn, will be quite omitted, in accordance with the line of modern development, which is to plough earlier and earlier. The latest verdict of the scientific schools is that if the ploughs immediately follow the reapers the ground is never too hard, and the turned-in straw is much more- 'quickly broken up into the stuff of fertility by soil microbes. I do

not know whether any English farmers are yet using a more elaborate machine now coming into favour in Australia. A single harvester, travelling under its own motion and cutting a track for its own wheels, not only reaps but threshes, and not only threshes but sorts the seed into three-bushel sacks all at one and the same time.

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