INSTRUMENTS OF HUSBANDRY. 77 



former is now thoroughly convinced, that the cart in com- 

 mon use, answers every agricultural purpose infinitely bet- 

 ter. 



4. FANNERS, or the Winnowing Machine.* This excel- 

 lent instrument is more generally to be found in Scotland 

 than even the threshing-mill. By using it, with the aid of 

 riddles in some part of the operation, all dust, chaf and 

 other refuse are blown away, and the grain separated into 

 divisions according to its quality, by which it is rendered 

 intrinsically more valuable, than if the good and the bad 

 were mixed together ; in the same manner, as a fleece of 

 wool is more valuable, when broken or sorted by the wool- 

 stapler.f The threshing-mill has generally one set of fan- 



Mr George Culley thought, that those implements should not be 

 called Fanners, but winnowing machines, because the fanners with sails, 

 properly so called, are used in the midland counties, and in many parts 

 of England, where these truly valuable machines, so universal in the 

 northern parts of the kingdom, are scarcely known to many farmers in the 

 south. It is a singular anecdote, worth preserving, as proving the diffi- 

 culty in the intrqduction of new imprpvements, that, about the year 

 1 765, a friend of Mr Culley's sent a winnowing machine to Mr Bakewell, 

 at that great man's request. Twoorthree years afterwards,Mr Culley hap- 

 pened to accompany that friend to Dishley, where they observed them 

 dressing barley with their own kind of fanners. On being asked, what 

 had become of the winnowing machine, one of them pointed to the 

 roof of the immense barn, where it was suspended as a useless implement. 

 Even that wonderful persevering man, was not able to overcome the pre- 

 judices of his servants of that period. Mr Cuiley states, that it was about 

 the year 1752, that he first got a winnowing machine, all the way from 

 Hawick to Denton, long before he came to Northumberland, from Mi- 

 Rogers, ancestor to the person who still makes very good ones at Ha- 

 wick, in Selkirkshire, and whose ancestors were the first that manufactu- 

 red them in Britain. 



f There is an excellent account of the fanning or winnowing process 

 in Kerr's Berwickshire. It is said that the machine was invented by Dr 



