110 RENNIE'S MASTER ANDREW MEIKLE. PART VII. 



time to invent a machine which should satisfactorily 

 perform this operation; but without effect. An East 

 Lothian gentleman, named Michael Menzies, contrived 

 one upon the principle of the flail, arranging a number 

 of flails so as to be worked by a water-wheel ; but they 

 were soon broken to pieces by the force with which 

 they went. Another experiment was made in 1758 by 

 a Stirlingshire farmer, named Leckie, who invented a 

 machine on the principle of the horizontal flax-mill. It 

 consisted of a vertical shaft, with four cross-arms fixed 

 in a box, and when set in motion the arms beat off the 

 grain from the straw when let down upon them by hand. 

 Though this machine succeeded very well in thrashing 

 oats, it cut off the heads of every other kind of corn 

 presented to it. Similar attempts were made about the 

 same time by farmers in the south, more especially 

 by Mr. Ilderton at Alnwick, Mr. Smart at Wark, and 

 Mr. Oxley at Flodden, about 1.772-3. The machine 

 employed by these gentlemen was composed of a large 

 drum, about six feet in diameter, resembling a sugar 

 hogshead, round which were placed a number of fluted 

 rollers, which pressed inwards upon the drum by means 

 of springs. The corn, in passing the cylinder and 

 rollers, was no doubt rubbed out ; but a large proportion 

 of it being bruised and damaged by the operation, this 

 plan too was eventually abandoned. Mr. Oxley is said 

 to have afterwards tried the plan of stripping the corn 

 from the straw by means of a scutcher ; but the machine 

 constructed with this object did not answer, and it was 

 also laid aside. 



Mr. Kinloch, 1 of Grilmerton in East Lothian, had how- 

 ever seen the last-mentioned machine at work, and he 

 conceived the idea of improving it. He accordingly 

 had a model made, in which he contrived that the drum, 

 mounted with four pieces of fluted wood, should work 



Afterwards Sir Francis Kinloch. 



