94 THE BOOK OF WHEAT" 



42 feet in width, raising its cloud of yellow dust, and leaving 

 behind a long train of sacked grain, ready to be hauled to the 

 warehouse, railroad, or mill. It is estimated that 3,000 com- 

 bined harvesters were operated on the Pacific coast in 1903. 



THRESHING. 



Threshing is the operation of separating the " grain from 'the 

 chaff and straw. It is perhaps an entirely safe proposition" to 

 say that this has been accomplished in every imaginable man- 

 ner. Perels states that the oldest method of threshing was by 

 utilizing animals in tramping out the grain, but the flail, ac- 

 cording to the same author, was known in grayest antiquity in 

 a form similar to that of the present day. Both methods have 

 been used in modern times. It is more probable that the first 

 grain was shelled by hand, and that the first advance was to 

 an auxiliary implement, a staff or rod with which the heads 

 were pounded. The heads were also whipped across sticks or 

 poles. The flail was early invented by attaching a club to the 

 staff. The wind was the first fanning mill, the grain being 

 thrown up so that the chaff would be blown away. The same 

 forces, gravity and a current of air, are still utilized. The only 

 improvements have been in the manner in which they are ap- 

 plied and in the addition of the screen. 



Horses were used to tramp out the grain in early times in the 

 United States, or a great roller with large wooden pins was 

 dragged over the grain. . These methods were still used in this 

 country in 1835 or 1840. From 23 to 30 bushels per day for 

 three horses, a man and a boy were the usual results. This 

 method is still often used in Russia, where, in cleaning the 

 wheat, the "shovel and wind" plan is utilized for the chaff, 

 and a sieve 3 or 4 feet in diameter is used for removing weed 

 seeds and grading the grain. In Spain and Syria, the thresh- 

 ing is also frequently accomplished by driving oxen or horses 

 ever the grain. The same method is occasionally found in re- 

 mote parts of Argentina. Even in New Mexico one could find 

 grain reaped with the sickle and threshed by the trampling 

 of goats as late as 1899. 



The Flail. Where this implement was used, threshing was 

 the chief farm work of winter. The flail was not rare in 



