92 Modern Improvements in Corn-Milling Machinei'y. 
foremen and workmen can ascend or descend to any desired 
floor with great rapidity. A modern mill should be well venti- 
lated by exhaust-fans, and the dust of the old-fashioned mill 
should not be visible. In fact, dust is never allowed to escape 
in a well-cared-for mill, and the utmost cleanliness is observed, 
as a prevention of waste and as one of the most important pre- 
cautions against fire, accumulations of dust being not only 
wasteful but highly dangerous. 
Fire is, in fact, a source of anxiety and terror to a mill-owner, 
and there is no doubt that for a few years after the introduction 
of the new system the want of knowledge of sources of danger, 
arising chiefly from the multiplication of machinery and the lack 
of sufficient care in watching the many points where friction may 
produce heat, exposed corn-mills to the suspicion of being very 
risky buildings, as a large proportion of tires did take place. 
Yet if a corn-mill be carefully designed, and well looked after, 
there is no reason why its machinery should be dangerous. 
Mills should, however, be well provided with fire-extinguishing 
appliances ; hand apparatus, buckets, fire mains, and hose reach- 
ing every part of the building should be available on every floor, 
and recently automatic sprinkling arrangements have been con- 
trived, by which a shower of water may be discharged on any 
spot when sufficient heat is developed to melt a metal alloy plug 
fusible at a comparatively low temperature. The electric light 
is of great advantage to corn-mills, as they almost invariably are 
kept in operation by night as well as by day. 
An idea having thus been gained of the general condition 
and appliances of recently constructed mills, the machinery in 
them may be more particularly described. To commence with 
the wheat-cleaning machinery. In the present day this has to be 
arranged and adapted so as to deal efficiently with wheats of all de- 
scriptions produced in all wheat-exporting countries of the world. 
For English wheat alone very simple appliances are sufficient. 
If seeds be found among the wheat, they are usually small and 
easily removed by sifting-machiues, and slight friction detaches 
from the corn any chafl', which may then be removed by win- 
nowing. Smut is more difficult to deal with, as however care- 
fully the sifting or winnowing process may be conducted, either 
then or previously in thrashing a certain number of smut balls, 
if they are present, will have been broken, and will discolour 
the wheat, especially at the hairy or " fuzzy " end. Thei'e are 
" smutters " — a generic name applied to all machines that clean 
wheat by friction, a name used when native wheats were chiefly 
employed, and when smut was more prevalent than it is now — 
which will scrub off all this smut, if not by one passage through 
the machine, at any rate by a second ; and there are " smutters " 
