VIII.] AND HUSKING, 



way of doing the work, it is certainly attended 

 with some waste, and I have never seen it done but 

 once or twice. Extraordinarily lazy fellows spread 

 it six inches deep over a barn's floor (the barn's 

 floors are very large), where they trample it off 

 the cobb by the feet of horses or oxen, as they 

 do almost all of their wheat and other grain. But 

 I saw, before I left America, a beautiful machine 

 for shelling corn. The ears were put into a hop- 

 per, a wheel was turned round by one man, the 

 cobbs came tumbling out of the side of the ma- 

 chine, and the grain came out at the front, or 

 the grain came out of the bottom, and the cobbs 

 at the front ; I thought that the man shelled a 

 bushel a minute, but my son James, who was with 

 me when I saw the machine at work, thinks that 

 it took five minutes to shell the bushel of corn, and 

 neither of us can recollect whether the quantity 

 applied to ears or to shelled corn; but, sup- 

 posing it to be applied to ears, and supposing the 

 time to be five minutes in the place of one ; here 

 are twelve bushels of ears shelled in an hour, with 

 the greatest facility imaginable ; and, six bushels 

 of shelled corn are the effect of the hour's la- 

 bour. I have written to America for one of 

 these machines, and if that come, which I am 

 pretty sure it will, there is an end of all trouble 

 about the shelling ; but, suppose it be shelled 

 by hand, in the manner first described, a maa 



