114 FIELD CROP PRODUCTION 



products of milling will be briefly taken up in the following 

 paragraphs. 



101. The evolution of the flour mill. The story of the 

 processes through which wheat passes, from the time it 

 reaches the mill until it appears on our tables as bread 

 or other baked foods, is a long one. It might be interest- 

 ing to trace very briefly the evolution of the flour mill, 

 from the time when the first miller, in prehistoric times, 

 took the wheat grain from the stalk and used his teeth 

 as bur stones. The simplest milling device of which we 

 know is the hand-stone, consisting of a hollow stone 

 into which the grain was placed, and a crusher with 

 which to pound it. Four thousand years later came the 

 invention of the saddle-stone, a marked improvement 

 over the hand-stone. In using this device the grain was 

 placed on the concave surface of the lower stone, and 

 rubbed by the upper stone, which worked backward and 

 forward, and not by rolling or pounding. The saddle- 

 stone was hi very general use, as is proved by the pre- 

 historic remains of almost every European race. A 

 contemporary of the saddle-stone was the mortar, used 

 by the Greeks and other nations. 



The first complete grinding machine came with the 

 invention of the quern, shortly before the beginning of 

 the Christian era. Here the grain was ground with a cir- 

 cular motion, and the two stones, instead of being loose, 

 were fastened together. At first the grinding surfaces 

 were flat, but later they were grooved. A handle, fitted 

 into a hole drilled in the upper stone, was the means by 

 which the miller caused the upper stone to revolve upon 

 the lower. The quern is still commonly used in parts of 

 Europe, Asia, China, and Japan. 



Women were the millers of the races for many centuries. 



