Briareus, with all his fabled faculties, never had such numerous and supple fingers as this creature of human invention.

When set a-going, they are clattering and whisking and frisking everywhere, on the barn-floor, on the hay-loft, in the granary, under the eaves, down cellar, and all this at the same time.

It is doubtful if any stationary engine in a machine shop ever performed more diversified operations at once; thus proving most conclusively how a farmer may work motive power which it was once thought preposterous in him to think of using.

It threshes wheat and other kinds of grain at the rate of from 400 to 500 bushels a day; it conveys the straw up to a platform across what we call the "_great beams_," where it is cut into chaff and dropped into a great bay, at the trifling expense of sixpence, or twelve cents, per quantity grown on an acre! While it is doing this in one direction, it is turning machinery in another that cleans and weighs the grain off into sacks ready for the market.

Open the doors right and left and you find it at work like reason, breaking oil-cake, grinding corn for the fat stock, turning the grindstone, pitching, pounding, paring, rubbing, grabbing, and twisting, threshing, wrestling, chopping, flopping, and hopping, after the manner of "The Waters of Lodore." The housings for live stock are most admirably constructed as well as extensive, and all the great yards are well fitted for making and delivering manure.