326 



NATURE S TEACHINGS. 



A s the stone held in the hand was rounded, it naturally wore a 

 rounded hollow in the lower stone, and this made the process 

 of trituration easier. Perhaps some of my readers may have 

 noticed that when a chemist makes up a prescription, and is 

 obliged to reduce one of the ingredients to powder, he always 

 does so by rubbing, and not by pounding, as is generally believed. 

 He works the pestle round and round the mortar with a kind 

 of twisting motion, and thus obtains a powder much too fine to 

 have been produced by any amount of pounding. 



The labour of this operation is necessarily very severe, and 

 therefore the Kafir of the present day, as did his predecessors 



TOOTH OK ELEPHANT. 



GRINDSTONE. 



of the long-lost races, declines to do it himself, but hands it 

 over to the women. In Palestine, as in other parts of the 

 world, a simple mill has been invented, which takes away 

 much of the labour, and, above all, releases the grinder from 

 the obligation of leaning with her full weight upon the upper 

 stone. In this mill the stones are similar. The upper is 

 moved backwards and forwards round a pivot, and the grain is 

 passed between them by means of a conical aperture in the upper 

 stone, which answers the purpose of our "hopper." 



In order to work this mill, two women are required, sitting 

 opposite each other, with the mill between them, holding the 

 same handle, and assisting each other in turning the stone 

 backwards and forwards. No one who has not seen this 

 operation can fully appreciate the force of the saying that 

 " two women shall be grinding at the mill ; the one shall be 

 taken, and the other left." 



