The Sun.
London, England, 1858-09-23 00:00:00

TILE ARMY.

Vice-Admiral Win. Fanshawe Martin, Captain
the Hon. James Drummond, C. 8., and Sir Baldwin
W. Walker, K.O 8., Aide-de-Camp to the Queen,
and Surveyor of the Navy, visited Woolwich Dock-
yard yesterday morning, and ,accompanied by Com-
modore Shepherd, and Mr. Johnstone, the acting
storekeeper of the dockyard, mustered and passed
in review the whole of the operatives of the esta-
blishment for the purpose of nominating a certain
number for the superannuation list.
The orders recently received from the War De-
partment, at the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, relative
to the stoppage of the men's weekly money, claimed
for payment of income-tax, have been cancelled,
and the whole of the money received is to be re-
turned.

The whole of the Royal Horse Artillery and the
field batteries were yesterday morning paraded on
Woolwich-common, and were put through a course
of field exercises with blank ammunition.
This morning a large party of convicts, to the
number of nearly 100, arrived at the new convict
establishment, St. Mary's, Chatham, from London,
far the purpose of undergoing their terms of penal
servitude, and being employed on the public
works in progress at Chatham. On their arrival
at the Strood railway station they were chained
together in gangs, and conveyed in a number of
vans and omnibuses to the convict prison. There
are at present upwards of 1,000 convicts in the
prison.

GAIN OF REAPING BY MACHINERY.

In an article on this -subject in Bell's Weekly
Messenger of Monday, the saving effected by em-
ploying the reaping machine is thus exhibited.
A reaping machine will cut from 10 to 15 acres
per day; we will take, however, 10 acres per day :
Ten acres, for one pair of horses and one
man will cost £o 15 0
Binding, &c., 48. fxl per acre 2 5 0

£3 0 0
Supposing this work done by hand labour, we
have the following results :
Ten acres mowed and bound, at 9s per
acre, is.
Difference in favour of reaper 1 10 0
This work would require 23 men to cut and bind
the corn, whereas the machine only requires eight
men to do the binding ; thus there is a positive
saving of 12 men in favour of the reaper. The mere
money saving, however, in diminution of hands re-
quired to work the reaper, is not the most im-
portant feature in the case. There is time, to gain
which in our variable climate is of the utmost value

to the farmer. Let us, however, put the money
saving part of the question in another point of
view. One firm alone, Messrs. Burgess and Key,
has ,delivered, we believe, upwards of 700 reapers
this year to the farmers, all of which have been
actively employed during harvest ; and if we com-
pare this number of reapers, and the labour at-
tendant upon them, with hanil labour required to
effect the same amount of work, we have the follow-
ing results :

Labour saved per day of 7,700 men, at
4s. 6d £1,732 10 0
Ditto, for the 28 days of harvest 48,510 0 0
being so much in favour of the reaper as against
hand labour. The money saving, however, is but a
minor consideration compared with the saving of
grain, the prevention of shedding by cutting at the
proper time, the securing the crop in a short time,
and the being able to get in the harvest with the
ordinary staff of hands, and not subject to the fre-
quent inconvenience of procuring extra hands, at a
season when labour is especially scarce and dear.
The reaper, in short, enables the farmer to secure
his crop in three weeks, instead of five weeks, and
with less waste and damage, a fact, the importance
of which, all things considered, can scarcely be over-
estimated, either by the producer or the consumer
of corn.

The Mark-lane Express of last Monday describes
a new reaping machine, with a self-acting rake,
which, instead of delivering in swathe, as do the
reapers now in use amongst us, delivers in sheaf.
It is the invention of Messrs. Seymour and Morgan,
of Brockport, near New York, and is introduced into
this country as the " Britannia reaping machine."
The bunches are delivered at every five yards, laid
31 to 4 feet clear away from the standing crop ;
and while lying nearly at right angles to the direc-
tion of the reaping, are only spread out some three
or four feet, so that a man ties up the sheaf without
any " gathering" being necessary. The sheaves
when tied are very neat, the ears being more toge-
ther at one end than other sheaves gathered and
tied after a common scythe. A trial of the machine,
which took place last week, is described, and the
conclusion come to is, that the sole objection to the
machine is its great draught, which might be
diminished.