The Ei'ohdion of Agrlcvlhiml hnplemenfs. 51 
in the East at the present day, for the purpose of freeing wheat 
from chaff, an operation which was also frequently accomplished 
by partial burning or “ parching.” The flail is of immense, but 
unknown, antiquity, and so also is the “ rippling ” comb, still 
commonly used in the far East for separating rice from its 
straw. 
The grinding-mill, the last example of ancient agricultural 
machinery demanding notice, was used in prehistoric times, 
and references to it are common in the earliest writers. Familiar, 
however, as are the forms and character of the quern, the 
Etruscan sheller, and the Pompeiian and Egyptian mills, it 
is not generally known that the modern roller-mill had its 
ancient equivalent. Niebuhr, in his w’ork on Arabia, published 
in 1772, desci’ibes and flgures a hand roller-mill which he was 
assured by the Arabs, and found npon trial, made better flour 
than the quern. Nor was this Arab equivalent of the most 
modern of modern mills any rude affair. On the contraiy, it was 
made with the highest artistic skill, as Niebuhr’s illustration, 
adopted by Taylor, Smith, and other writers on early Hebrew 
milling, sufficiently testifies. Livingstone, too, found a rude 
roller-mill in nse among certain African tribes, and so fine was 
the flour it made that the good missionary concludes his notice 
of it by suggesting that such may have been the mill with 
which “ Abraham made fine flour for the angels.” 
Few and rude as were the tillage implements of antiquity, 
they were scarcely added to, or improved, jn Western Europe 
down to the close of the last century; agriculture being one of 
the latest arts to feel the influence of that mighty revolution in 
industrial methods which, originating in the genius of Arkwright 
and Hargreaves, Crompton and Watt, Brindley and Telford, has 
practically resulted in making the mechanic the dictator of the 
modern world. Such as the improvements were which first 
followed upon several thousand years of stagnation, they will be 
briefly noticed, each in its place, as, the various agricultural 
implements of the present day come under review. 
Farm machinery falls naturally into the following classifica- 
tion : — 
1. Tillage implements, — including ploughs, cultivators, 
harrows, rollers, and clod-crushers. 
2. Seeding implements, — including drills, whether for seed 
or manure. 
d. Harvesting implements, — including reaping- and mow- 
