238 
The Evolution of Agricultural Implements, 
THE EVOLUTION OF AGRICULTURAL 
IMPLEMENTS.— II. 
In the previous part of this paper (see this Volume, pp. 49 to 
70) I dealt with the three sections of implements respectively 
adapted to purposes of tillage, seeding, and harvesting. I now 
proceed to discuss the remaining sections of implements as 
classified on page 52. These, it may be remembered, comprise 
(4) machines for preparing crops for market, (5) machines for 
preparing crops for food, and (G) dairying appliances, to which 
are added (7) prime movers, (8) drainage machinery, and (9) 
appliances for the reclamation of land. 
Class IV. — Machines for Preparing Crops for Market. 
Threshing-machines. — The first attempts to substitute power 
for manual labour in the threshing of grain were directed to the 
revolution of a number of flails striking a floor on which the 
grain was spread. Such was the contrivance of Michael Menzies, 
described in the Gentleman’s Magazine for 1735, and in the 
Transactions of the Society of Improvers in the Knowledge of 
Agriculture in Scotland, these being the earliest published 
accounts of a power threshing-machine. 
Menzies’s machine proved a failure, but it had been noticed 
that if an ear of wheat be squeezed between two blunt edges 
the grain will be spirted aside, a fact of which Alderton tried 
to take advantage in 1772. He constructed a machine of two 
rollers, one with cellular and the other with fluted surfaces, pass- 
ing the grain between which he anticipated that the kernels would 
be squeezed out of their husks and, falling into the cells provided 
for their reception, be finally discharged by the continued revolu- 
tion of the cylinder. In 1785, Winlaw followed Alderton’s 
lead with a machine consisting of two conical fluted rollers set 
vertically, but both these schemes proved failures. 
In 1788, Andrew Meikle, millwright, of Whitekirk, East 
Lothian, patented a threshing-machine which combined the 
blow of the flail with the rubbing action of the threshing-floor, 
upon which the ox’s hoof still treads out the grain in the East. 
The stroke of the flail was given by means of beaters fastened 
to a revolving drum, while the rubbing action arising between 
