198 



SKETCHES OF RURAL AFFAIRS. 



for it is performed in the open air (Hosea xiii. 3), upon 

 any round, level plot of ground, daubed over with cow- 

 dung to prevent as much as possible the earth, sand, 

 or gravel from rising ; but a great quantity of them all, 

 notwithstanding this precaution, must be unavoidably 

 taken up with the grain. At the same time the straw, 

 which is their chief and only fodder, is hereby shat- 

 tered to pieces, a circumstance alluded to in the second 

 book of Kings, (chap. xiii. 7,) where the king of Syria 

 is said to have made the Israelites 'like the dust by 

 threshing.' " 



Besides this primitive method of separating the grain, 

 there were others in which some attempt was made, at 

 a very early period, to produce a machine or implement 

 capable of threshing corn ; allusion is made to such an 

 implement in the following passage of Scripture : " Be- 

 hold, 1 will make thee a new sharp threshing instrument 

 having teeth : thou shalt thresh the mountains and beat 





them small, and shalt make the hills as chaff," (Isa. xli. 

 15.) An implement answering to this character, and 

 called a drag, was one in which a large and heavy 

 block of wood was armed and roughened at the bottom 

 with flints or pieces of iron, and was drawn by oxen, 

 mules, or horses, over the sheaves of corn, as they were 

 spread out on the floor. Sometimes this implement was 



