REAPING, the action of cutting ripe grain crops. Till the invention of the reaping machine, which came into practical use only about the middle of the 19th century, sickles and scythes were the sole reaping implements. Of the two the sickle is the more ancient, and indeed there is some reason to conclude that its use is coeval with the cultivation of grain crops. Among the remains of the later Stone period in Great Britain and on the European continent curved flint knives have occasionally been found, the form of which has led to the suggestion that they were used as sickles. Sickles of bronze occur quite commonly among remains of the early inhabitants of Europe. Some of these are deeply curved hooks, flat on the under side, and with a strengthen ing ridge or back on the upper surface, while others are small curved knives, in form like the ordinary hedge-bill. Among the ancient Egyptians toothed or serrated sickles of both bronze and iron were used. Ancient Roman drawings show that both the scythe and the sickle were known to that people, and Pliny makes the distinction plain. (Hist. Nat. xviii. 67.) Although both imple ments have lost much of their importance since the general intro duction of mowing and reaping machinery, they are still used very extensively, especially in those countries like France where small agricultural holdings prevail. The principal modern forms are the toothed hook, the scythe hook, the Hainault scythe and the com mon scythe.
It was not until the beginning of the 19th century that any attempt was made to invent a reaping machine on anything like the lines that have been adopted since. In 1826 the Rev. Patrick Bell of Carmylie in Fifeshire brought out the first successful machine. He had worked at the making of it when a young man on his father's farm, and the principle he adopted, that of a series of scissors fastened on the "knife-board," was followed for a long time.
given to the knives by a connecting rod and crank driven by suit able gearing from the truck wheels. The cutting is thus done by a straight shearing action and not by clipping like scissors as in Bell's machine.
In the early days—from about to 187o—machines were fitted with a tilting board behind the cutting bar which caught the corn as it fell, and it was held there until enough for a sheaf , was gathered, when the load was "tilted" off by a suitable rake handled by a man who sat and worked the tilting board simul taneously with his foot and dropped the corn, to be lifted and tied into a sheaf by hand afterwards. The same machine was generally used for mowing (grass) by an interchange of parts, and the "combined" reaper and mower was in common use in the '705 and '8os. Later, various devices were adopted to do the tilting or sheafing mechanically, and the self end-delivery and self side delivery were long in use whereby through the adoption of revolving rakes on frames the sheaf-lots were delivered in sizes ready for tying up by hand. The subsequent tying or binding was done variously in different parts of the country. In the south of England it was customary for five men to make bands, lift the sheaf-lot, place in the band and tie and leave the sheaf lying on the ground to be set up afterwards, the gang of five being expected to keep up to a reaper cutting round the four sides of a field. In the north and in Scotland the cutting was only done on one side at a time, the machine riding back empty, and three boys made the bands ("straps"), three women lifted the lots and laid them on the bands and three men bound the sheaves and set up in stooks. Thus three gangs of three each were required to keep a machine going, but only about five acres per day could be reaped.