468 
Machine for beating out Hemp seed • 
thering grain, the wooden machine (drawn round by one horse)' 
for thrashing grain, the iron shod shovel, drawn by oxen, and held 
by two handles, as a plough, for the purpose of levelling the roads, 
&c. Nor are the Americans, or other settlers in this country, 
fond of any work that needs violent exercise of the body ; which 
the breaking of hemp in the old way certainly occasions, in conse- 
quence of requiring a cross motion of the arm, which makes the 
breakers complain of a pain about the short ribs on the side they 
hold the hemp ; and on the opposite side a little under the shoul- 
ders, so that breaking of hemp in the old way is a great obstacle 
to its increased culture. To render labour, therefore, somewhat 
more easy and expeditious, is an object worthy the first attention, 
and I consider it practicable at a small expense, and have sent to 
the society, a model of a machine for this purpose. 
I have observed among the clothiers’ and fullers’ machinery, 
great power and rapid motion proceeding from what is commonly 
called a dash wheel, erected across a stream of rapid water, the 
flies or float boards of which are fixed in the octangular axis, from 
fifteen to twenty-five feet in length, and from three and a half in 
depth, each fly. I have seen many corn mills in Upper Canada, 
with no other water wheels than such as the above described, which 
save a vast expense in raising dams, See. 
There are a number of streams in that part of Canada, whiefir 
I have endeavoured to describe, (as to the practicability of the va- 
rious ways of cultivation) that are well calculated for such wheels % 7 
and where these streams or rivers are not too wide, the axis of the 
wheel might be extended across so as to reach the land on each 
side, where I propose the breakers to be fixed to go by a tilt the 
same as a forge hammer. Such a simple piece of machinery would 
not cost more than 70 or 80 dollars, as little iron would be wanted, 
and timber we have for nothing ; and when in motion would em- 
ploy four breakers and two servers, from whom I should expect as 
much good work as fifteen or sixteen persons could possibly do in 
the old way, and that without much bodily labour. 
Mills for breaking hemp, on the very same principle as that 
of a saw mill, as to motion only an addition of an iron crank, so as 
to run with two erdnks instead of one, with something of a larger 
sweep than that of a saw mill, would be of vast utility in a neigh- 
bourhood of a large growth of hemp, and would not cost more than 
a common saw mill. As the breaks of the frame continue in motion 
the same as that of a saw mill, twenty men might be employed, who 
