THE MILLER.

WATER-MILL.

There is scarcely a boy to be found who, when he has been into the country and seen the wheel of the old water mill going round, or the fans of the windmill slowly revolving in the air, has not thought that it would be pleasant to follow the business of a Miller.

Millers are proverbially jolly fellows, and their houses and the mills themselves are generally very picturesque, and stand in pleasant country places; then, again, what wonderfulfat perch and chub and pike can be caught in the weir or the mill stream, and what a quiet sleepy occupation it must be to lie on the grass or in some great room in the mill, watching the fans, or listening to the summer breeze wafting through the sails!

If anybody should think, however, that the Miller’s life is a lazy one he had better alter his opinion; for, unless he wishes to starve amidst plenty, the Miller must be up betimes, and, besides working himself, keeping a good look-out amongst his men, lest both he and his customers should suffer by their negligence.

The mortar would seem to be the earliest machine used for the purpose of bruising or reducing grain to a powder, or into a state fit for the making of bread. By means of the handle the pestle would with tolerable facility be driven round the mortar, and the grain reduced to a powder, as is done with certain drugs by the pestle of the apothecary of the present day.

In process of time, shafts were added to these machines; and in the opinion of Beckmann, the oldest cattle mills resembled those described in Sonnerat’s Voyage to the East Indies, in which the pestle of a mortar, fastened to a stake driven into the earth, is affixed to a shaft, to which two oxen are yoked. These oxen are driven by a man, while another is employed in dropping the grain into the mortar and placing it under the pestle.

We have good reason for knowing that the Romans, for a long time, used no other instrument than the pestle and mortar.

Pounding continued in use among the Romans so late as after the era of Vespasian. This fact clearly proves that the Romans were many ages behind the Eastern world inthe arts of civilization, for grinding of corn into flour was practised, we know, in the times of the patriarchs, and was probably the invention of the antediluvian world.

The subject-Britons universally adopted the Roman name, but applied it, as we their successors apply it at present, only to the Roman mill; still distinguishing their own original mill as we distinguish it, by its own original denomination of a quern. A Roman or water mill was probably erected at every stationary town in the kingdom, and it is quite certain that one was erected at Mancunium (Manchester), serving equally the purposes of the town and the uses of the garrison. One alone would be sufficient, as the use of hand-mills was at that time very common in both, many such having been found about the site of the station particularly, and the use of them generally having being retained among us very nearly to the present period. Such mills it would be particularly necessary to have in the station, that the garrison might be prudently provided against a siege.

The ancient Asiatic hand-mill consists of two flat round stones, about twenty inches or two feet in diameter, kept rolling one on the other by means of a stick, which does the office of a handle. The corn falls down on the undermost stone, through a hole in the middle of the uppermost, which by its circular motion spreads it on the undermost, where it is bruised and reduced to flour; this flour, working out at the rim of the millstones, lights on a board set on purpose to receive it. The bread made of it is said to be better tasted than that made by either wind or water mills: these hand-mills cost only a few shillings of English money.

This description of mill is frequently alluded to in theScriptures, and it was the practice for the women to grind corn every morning by means of hand-mills; and in the East, or at least in many parts of it, it continues to be the practice to this day.

Water wheels, as far as the figure and construction are concerned, may be reduced to three kinds, and they are usually known by the names—overshot wheel, balance wheel, breast wheel, and undershot wheel.

Mill.

In an overshot wheel, the water is conducted over the top of the wheel, and acts first by its momentum or mere movement, or motion, and then by its weight—the weight being its principal power in impelling the wheel round, the mere movement or motion of the water producing in this case little effect. The water is received into buckets placed all around the circle of the wheel. It first strikes thewheel at the top, and filling the first bucket, by its momentum or moving power, and more particularly by its weight, it sets the wheel in motion, and consequently makes that side heavier; and as fresh buckets rise to receive the water, while those below have emptied themselves, a constant tendency to motion is created, and rotation is produced.

In a balance wheel, the water strikes the wheel not at the top, but always more or less above its centre, or axle. This wheel differs in no respect from the overshot wheel in its construction. It is employed where there is not a sufficient fall for an overshot wheel, which requires less water in consequence of its commanding a much greater leverage.

In an undershot wheel the water acts only by its momentum, or moving power. The circumference of the wheel, instead of being supplied with buckets, as in the overshot, and breast or balance wheels, is furnished with floats, or float boards, as they are called, and, being exposed to the action of a running stream, generally, if not always, increased in rapidity by making an artificial fall, is thus driven round, and in flour-mills its force is communicated by cog-wheels to the stones employed in reducing corn to meal.

In a breast wheel, the water has no previous fall, and therefore does not strike the floats at the bottom of the wheels, as in the undershot wheel, with an increased velocity. The breast wheel is therefore fixed in what is called a race, formed of stone or brick work, agreeing with the curvature of the wheel, and being thus let on from its own level, acts both by its weight and momentum, or movement. This wheel is unlike the undershot wheel, being close boarded round its circumference, like an overshot or balance wheel,the undershot wheel being always open; in short, it is a sort of bucket wheel; the buckets, however, being constructed differently from those of the overshot and balance wheels.

A tide-mill, as the name imports, is worked by the ebbing and flowing of the tide. Of these mills there are various kinds; first, those in which the water wheel turns one way when the tide is rising, and the other when it is falling; secondly, those in which the wheel turns the same way whether it is rising or falling; thirdly, those in which the wheel itself rises or falls as the tide flows or ebbs; and fourthly, those in which the axle of the water wheel is so fixed, that it shall neither rise nor fall; the rotary motion being still given to the wheel, whether it be partially or wholly immersed in the water.

All the machines for grinding corn and seeds are mills, whatever may be their particular application. One very common form is that of an iron machine, supported on four legs, having a winch handle on one side, a fly wheel on another, a hopper at the top, and a crushing apparatus in the centre. The grain or seed is put into the hopper, the winch handle is turned, the grain becomes crushed to powder, and falls out at the bottom of the apparatus. Sometimes the mill is made chiefly of wood, but with iron wheel and crushing apparatus. One kind of wheat mill, in addition to the usual mill apparatus, has a chest which acts as a flour-dressing machine. Some mills are adapted for crushing beans rather than seeds.

The crushing apparatus in mills is of two kinds, either one stone working round in contact with another, or two metallic surfaces, between which the substance is forced, but between which it cannot pass except in a fine state.

Themillstonesemployed in grinding corn require to be made of a peculiar kind of stone. The greater proportion of our millstones are procured from a particular spot in Western Germany. At about ten miles from Coblentz is a small town called Andernach, the chief trade of which is in millstones, procured from the neighbouring quarries of Nieder Mendig. There are several quarries, averaging about fifty feet in depth, each quarry shaped like an inverted cone, down the sides of which the quarrymen descend by a spiral path. The quarrymen have to cut away through a superincumbent layer of soft porous stone, till they come to a layer of hard, blackish, heavy stone, regularly porous, and yielding sparks when struck with iron. This is the millstone, and requires good and well-prepared tools to work it; it is supposed to be a compact lava from some extinct volcano; and as there are fissures or gaps at intervals, these facilitate the separation of the stone into blocks suitable for millstones. All round the bottom of the conical cavities, the stone has been excavated in galleries or horizontal passages. The stones are brought to shape by means of hammers and chisels. A deep socket is cut through the middle of such stones as are intended for runners, or upper stones. The furrows on the surfaces of the stones are produced by means of a double-edged hammer, about 14 lbs. weight.

Windmills are of two kinds; in one the wind is made to act upon vanes or sails, generally four, which are disposed so as to revolve by that action in a plane which is nearly vertical; and in the other, the axis of revolution being precisely vertical, any point on the surface of a vane revolves in a horizontal plane. The former is called averticalwindmill, and the latter ahorizontalwindmill.

The building for a vertical windmill is generally a wall of timber or brickwork, in the form of a frustrum of a cone, and terminated above by a wooden dome, which is capable of revolving horizontally upon it. A ring of wood, forming the lower part of the dome, rests upon a ring of the same material at the top of the wall, and the surfaces in contact being made very smooth, the dome may easily be turned round upon the wall; and is prevented from sliding off by a rim which projects from it, and descends over the interior circumference of the lower ring. The dome in turning carries with it the windsails and their axle; and thus the wind sails may be adjusted to agree with the direction of the wind, or the plane in which the radii of the sails turn may be made perpendicular to that direction. The revolution is sometimes accomplished by the force of a man applied to a winch near the ground, but in general the wind itself is made to turn the dome or the mill by means of a set of small vanes, which are situated at the extremity of a long horizontal arm projecting from the dome, in a plane passing through the vertical shaft of the mill, and on the side opposite to the great sails.

A horizontal windmill is a great cylindrical frame of timber, which is made to revolve about an upright centre, and its convex surface is formed of boards attached in vertical positions to the upper and lower parts of the frame. The whole is enclosed in a fixed cylinder having the same upright centre as the other; this consists of arevolving screenor a number of boards, which are so disposed that in whatever direction the wind may blow, it may enter between them on one side only of a vertical plane, passing through the axis, and thus give motion to the interior cylinder. The effective power of the vertical windmill is,however, so much greater than that of the horizontal windmill, that the latter is now seldom constructed.

Dressing Machine or Bolter. Jack.

Thedressing machineconsists of a hollow cylinder, or frame, covered with wire cloth of different degrees of fineness, the finest being at the elevated, or upper end of the cylinder, which is inclined in the same way as the bolting mill. Within the cylinder, which may be made of pieces of wood rendered circular, and, like the ribs of an animal, placed at certain distances from each other, a reel is placed with its axle in the centre of the cylinder, which is fixed, or stationary. To the rails of this reel are attached hair brushes, which, when made to revolve, or turn round, brush against the interior cloth wire surface of the cylinder. The machine is provided with a shoe or jigger, very similar to that of the millstones, to cause a regular supply of flour or meal in the same state in which it came from the millstones through a spout from the floor above, to which it is elevated by the sack tackle, or elevator, after being ground. The meal by this means being gradually let, or fed into the cylinder, is,by the motion of the brushes of the reel, sifted or rubbed through the cloth wire with which the cylinder is covered. The finest of the flour will go through the upper end, where the finest wire cloth is placed; the next finest through the next division of the wire cloth, which is coarser, the middlings through the following division, the pollard, or sharps, through the last, and the bran, not being able to get through the wire cloth at all, on account of its coarseness, is thrown out at the end of the cylinder. The cylinder is enclosed in a large and close box, to prevent the waste of flour by its going off in dust. This box is divided into several compartments, or partitions, by means of moveableboards. Some millers have more partitions than others, and indeed they all vary the number to suit the nature or sort of flour which they are manufacturing. In a dressing machine of three divisions, the flour deposited in the first is called household, or seconds, that in the second middlings, and in the third pollard, which is not flour, but a fine description of bran.

Revolving Screen. Jacob’s Ladder.

When wheat arrives at a mill to be ground the sacks are received in the lower part of the mill, and hoisted by means of the sack tackle to the upper storeys, generally the uppermost. The mode of this operation is as follows, and it is performed with little bodily labour. The rope or chain of the sack tackle is firmly fastened round the mouth of the sack by the man below, who by means of a rope attached to a lever throws the tackle into gear. The sack then immediately ascends, without any further aid from the man, through the different trap doors, till it has arrived at the place of its destination. There another man is ready to receive it, who, as soon as he has landed it by pulling it on one side, throws the tackle out of gear, and returns the rope or chain to the man below. The wheat is then shot into a garner or bin, and thus the same process goes on till the whole load or cargo is safely deposited in the bin or garner. The wheat remains there till it is wanted to be ground, when, by means of a spout, it is conveyed to the hoppers below, and from thence runs in between the stones. In its progress to the stones, it may, or may not, be subjected to a cleansing process. The wheat being reduced to a flour, escapes through an aperture of the floor into a spout, by which it is conveyed to the trough. It is then either put into sacks, and drawn up again into one of the higher storeys, and deposited in bins over the dressingmachines, or this is effected by a machine called anelevator, which performs the operation without the assistance of manual labour. In this bin the flour should be left till, at any rate, it is perfectly cold, but is will be all the better if it remain for three or four weeks, provided it be occasionally turned. From this bin it is passed, by means of a spout, to the hopper of the bolting mill or dressing machine, by which it is separated from the bran or pollard, and is then fit for use.

Smutter. Scoop. Claw.

Thescreening machineconsists of a roller-shaped sieve, so divided, that the corn which is placed at one end passes over a large surface of wire as the sieve revolves, and this operation removes from it external impurities, such as sand and dirt. When it arrives at the end of the screw thewheat falls into a hopper, by which it is conveyed by spouts into small hoppers, placed over one side of each pair of millstones. From these hoppers there are spouts placed in nearly a horizontal line, which spouts conduct the corn from the hoppers to the eye of the millstone. They are attached to the hopper, so as to admit of a horizontal motion, which is effected by a projecting part of the axle or spindle of the stone, called adamsel. It is shaped like a cross, so that, by the revolution of the millstone, it keeps tapping the end of the spout, and gives a rapid vibratory motion to it, which causes a regular supply of corn to enter the eye of the stone; by the action of the stones the corn isreduced to flour, which passes, by means of spouts, into the troughs on the ground floor.

Scales and Weights. Troughs.

Thetroughsin which the flour is kept; thescoopandscalesfor weighing small quantities; theclawfor moving and thesteelyardfor weighing sacks, are the other principal objects seen in a mill.Jacob’s ladderis the name given to a revolving band fitted with a number of leathern cups. These revolve with the band through the flour and serve to carry it up a shaft from one floor to another.

Steelyard.

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