1864. | Farrzarrn’s Mills and Millwork. 199 
army takes the field. The whole affair would not exceed the weight 
of one of our heavy siege-guns, and there would be no practical diffi- 
culty in the way of introducing an engine capable of supplying 
newly-baked bread from an oven constructed in the smoke-box of a 
portable locomotive engine, mounted on wheels and prepared to grind 
at the same time.” Here is another direction in which the ingenuity 
-of mechanicians may be made to serve the interests of military prac- 
tice, somewhat more peaceable than that which is leading many of our 
best mechanical engineers to become either artillerists or armour- 
makers. 
Our limits do not permit us to follow Mr. Fairbairn through the 
descriptions of flax, cotton, oil, gunpowder, and paper mills, all of 
which are more than usually valuable, as they contain, in almost every 
case, the story of his own doings, and the result of his own practice. 
As the most successful and most extensive master-millwright in the 
world, Mr. Fairbairn has done good service to the profession of en- 
gineering by the publication of this work. The subject is one on 
which there has been a singular dearth of published information ; 
most other important branches of engineering have been treated at 
length by more or less able authors, but the mysteries of the mill- 
wright’s craft have been hitherto preserved mainly in oral tradi- 
tions and empirical rules. No fitter person than Mr. Fairbairn could 
have been found to give this floating information a shape. Com- 
mencing his work as a millwright some fifty years ago, he found the 
practice of mill-work in a most primitive condition. By the applica- 
tion of new principles, by the concentration of motive power, the 
substitution of cast-iron wheelwork for the old and cumbrous forms 
of wooden gear, the improvement of water-wheels by the invention of 
ventilating buckets, the use of the steam-engine as a prime mover, and 
last, not least, the introduction of wrought-iron shafting of small 
diameter, he brought about just such a revolution in the millwright’s 
art as the increasing commercial activity of his time demanded. Like 
most men who attain celebrity, William Fairbairn has worked hand in 
hand with circumstances. His professional career commenced, to use 
his own words, “just at a time when the country was recovering from 
the effects of a long and disastrous war, and he was enabled, from this 
circumstance, to grow up with, and follow out conscientiously, nearly 
the whole of the discoveries, improvements, and changes that have 
since taken place in mechanical science.” Hence it was that he was 
enabled to apply his great natural mechanical abilities with so much 
success towards the further development of our industrial resources 
and the extension of our trade throughout the globe. 
