614 The Tiials of Grist Mills and Disintegrators at Plymouth. 
Conditions of Trial, 
The trials in this class will be conducted in a similar manner to those in 
Class 2. 
The following will he the points awarded : — 
L Cost 20 
2. Simplicity combined with strength, workmanship, and 
durability 15 
3. Power taken to drive same 15 
4. Uniformity of working and facilities for regulating same 10 
5. Uniformity of produce 15 
6. Attendance necessary 15 
7. General adaptability for reducing various substances . 10 
100 
There are moments, sometimes prolonged into hours, during 
which, in every trial of implements, Judges acquire unsought and 
unwelcome opportunities for reflection ; spaces of time, vacant of 
work but full of impatience, during which the Society's engineer, 
it may be, equally unhappy with the Judges, is cudgelling his 
brains for some mechanical expedient needed on the instant, 
or some half-nervous, half-belated exhibitor is re-splicing a strap 
that will not keep on the pulley, or even half-rebuilding his crude 
machine on the very trial ground. 
Several such lacuna? (without responsibility on the part of the 
engineers, whose arrangements worked with perfect smoothness 
throughout) occurred during the disintegrator trials, and were 
utilised by the Judges in a discussion of the problem, " What, 
after all, is a disintegrator ? " 
This gravely disquieting, because fundamental, question was 
raised by the appearance at the trials of a mechanical " Banquo " 
in the shape of a bone-mill, which did excellent work operating 
upon such materials as a farmer wants to crush — e.g. bones and 
cake — but was altogether incapable of dealing with the thousand 
and one other materials, ranging from quartz-rock to rags, 
which the " Devil " readily tore into " Devil's dust." Happily, 
however, the progress of the trials themselves resolved a diffi- 
culty — which might, under some circumstances, have proved 
considerable — and made the awards easy. 
Eight disintegrators in all were entered for trial, but the 
number actually tested was four ; three machines coming under 
the meaning of the word " duplicate," as defined by Regula- 
tion 34, while a fifth did not succeed in getting ready for trial 
at all. The following list (Table IV.) includes all the machine! 
appearing for trial, arranged in the order of experimenting : — 
