favourite plan with the Americans and the French millwrights, but although the three points must bear equally, many of the English mechanics prefer adjustment by four points, by which they obtain two level lines intersecting

each other.

The stone being truly levelled on the face, is now often adjusted and fixed horizontally also by three or four screws dividing the circumference; but in many mills it is retained by a strong curb of wood surrounding the stone, and rising up within an inch or two of its face. This curb serves also as a base for the wooden case inclosing the millstone, and through it the meal is discharged by the spout below into sacks or binns as may be most convenient. In several of the modern mills the case is made of sheet-iron, sometimes zinked or galvanized, and the meal descending by the spout falls into a long trough fitted with an endless screw of a coarse pitch and deep thread, sometimes of cast iron, sometimes of thin plate of equal length with the trough, revolving in it, which conveys the meal to some convenient point, whence it is carried up into a higher loft by means of an endless belt or web fitted with light iron or tin buckets, and called by the millers a "Jacob's ladder;" here it is distributed as may be desired to be ready for the dressing-machine.

The most conspicuous adjuncts of the millstones were the hopper with the feeding trunk or shoot, to bring the corn into the hopper from the floor above; the shoe to carry it over the eye of the millstone; the mill clack or damsel," to shake the shoe and supply the corn evenly and regularly from the hopper to the mill; the cord and peg to raise or lower the point of the shoe and augment the feed; the wooden spring to make the shoe recoil; and the warning bell, to call the negligent miller to his empty hopper. Pleasant it was to see all this simple, but ingenious apparatus, steadily and quietly, yet with an appearance of life, instinct, and good will, cheerfully perform its task to the sound of the merry mill clack.

The hopper and its attendants are disappearing in modern mills, and a brass receptacle, vainly attempting to imitate a Roman urn, is superseding the only machinery which may be said to have become classical and respected; into this urn the corn descends from above by a pipe fitted into it, and thus the mill-eye is kept closed, as it must be, when an air blast is used. But the hopper had already begun to lose its traditional form of an inverted pyramid of wood, and to

appear as a funnel of sheet-iron, with which the old miller had no sympathy.

The iron apparatus for adjusting and securing the millstones, involved an iron frame and columns to carry it, instead of wood, and hence many mills of recent date have been built fire-proof. For such cases stone foundations and flooring have become requisite, and the mill-spindles, instead of being stepped upon the middle of the foot-bridge, a lever of wood fixed on a joint at one end, and regulated at the other, between the timber uprights carrying the millstone floor, has been brought down to a cast-iron pedestal resting on the masonry, and containing within it a compact combination of wheels or levers and screws, by which the space between the millstones may be altered at pleasure.

It has been proposed to use annular millstones, by removing the central part, where little work is done, and replacing it with a plate of iron leaving the skirt, or as it were a ring of stone; no practical examples of this kind have come under the author's observation, except so far as one of the conical corn-mills partakes of this character, but this must be described separately.

There are three modes of driving millstones at present in use.

The first was suggested by the use of the undershot water-wheel, which, revolving rapidly, required but one increase of speed, and one change of motion from the horizontal shaft to the vertical spindle, and consequently only one pair of wheels, namely, the face-wheel or pit-wheel on the water-wheel axis, and the lantern-wheel or trundle on the mill-spindle; all the machinery being made of wood except the pivots of the axle and the mill-spindle.

This simple, but efficient arrangement, may still be useful in remote settlements, where neither capital nor labour are abundant. It was the usual plan of a mill during the greater part of the last century, and the works of most writers on mechanics and mill-work of the time contain tables showing the number of cogs in the wheel, and staves or rounds in the trundle, to drive a 6-foot millstone sixty revolutions per minute. The cogs and rounds of wood have given place to bevelled wheels of cast-iron, but the principle remains the same. By this means any number of millstones may be placed in a straight line, or in two lines parallel to each other, each millstone requiring a pair of bevelled heels, one of the wheels (the largest) having wooden teeth,

that they may work more smoothly and with less noise. Mr. Smeaton used this plan for a line of millstones in 1781.

The second method came in with the overshot-wheel, which, going at a slower rate, required the speed to be increased twice between the water-wheel axis and the millstone. So the pit-wheel turned a bevelled pinion fixed on an upright shaft, which formed as it were the centre of the system; on this was also fixed a spur-wheel of large diameter, say from 6 to 10 feet, and round this were ranged in a circle the millstones varying in number with the power of the mill, seldom exceeding six pairs, although small mills had only two. These were driven by the large spur-wheel, by a spur pinion upon the spindle of each pair of stones-any one of which could be thrown out of gear and kept still while the others were at work, by raising up the pinion upon the spindle clear of the spur-wheel, and retaining it in that position by a screw. In the older mills a pair of stones were kept at rest by taking a couple of staves out of the trundle.

The third mode of driving the millstones is by belts; the author first saw it used in a large flour-mill at Attercliffe, near Sheffield, about thirty-five years ago, but it has remained in abeyance until lately, when it has made its appearance, and, copied from the French mills, it is again introduced into this country.

The inconvenience attending this mode, consists in the necessity of placing the belts at different levels when the millstones are placed round a vertical driving-shaft, and in the difficulty of disengaging them when so placed, so as to set any one pair of stones at rest while the others work; and when a line or two lines of millstones are driven from a horizontal shaft the belts are twisted in passing to the vertical spindles, whence there arises a number of practical difficulties-in keeping the belt in its proper place when at work and when at rest, and also in keeping it at a proper tension, so that the strain upon the belt and spindle may equal, sufficient, and not in excess. The advantages are supposed to consist in the saving of a pair of bevelled wheels to each pair of stones; but as there are three pulleys and a belt substituted for them, the economy is rather doubtful. There must be one broad pulley on the horizontal shaft, and two on the spindle, the one fast and the other loose, or vice versa, besides the requisite apparatus for giving the

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