Threshing

the process of freeing kernels of wheat and other grains from the head and chaff in which they grow. The term is applied also to clover, beans, flax, and other field crops, the seeds of which are liberated from pods. We can imagine primitive man pounding out his grain with a stick. The Chippewa squaw still guides her birch canoe through the standing rice, bends a cluster of stalks over the canoe, and beats out the kernels with a light club.

An early improvement was the flail. It consisted of a stout, short club, tied loosely by a thong to a long, slender handle. The thresher arranged his bundles of grain head to head on a threshing floor, untied the bands, seized the handle of his flail, and swinging the loose end around his head, brought it down with a thump on the heads of the bundles. The dextrous wielder of the flail did not allow it to rest on the grain at the end of a blow, but kept up a perpetual round-and-round movement, during which the club end gave the grain a thumping slap as it whirled by. In time of winter quiet Washington granted furloughs, permitting his men to go home and flail out their grain. This method of threshing is still practiced in central Germany and many other parts of Europe where fields are small and labor is cheap. In the uprisings of medieval times, before the use of gunpowder, the peasant's flail was a weapon by no means to be despised. A well delivered rap on a steel cap has laid many an armored knight low.

In the eighteenth century Michael Menzies, an ingenious Scot, endeavored to construct a threshing machine by attaching a series of flails to a revolving shaft turned by a water wheel. The flails came around with a flourish and rapped out the grain with delightful rapidity, but they pounded themselves into splinters in a short time and the plan was given up. In 1788 a more successful machine was patented by Andrew Meikle, also a Scotchman. It was run by water power. Grain was brought to the machine like grist to a mill.

The threshing floor has been for centuries an honored institution in the Orient. Bundles are laid on a circular floor of hard clay, and domestic animals are driven around for hours at a time to tread out the grain. In the Mosaic law it is written, "Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn." The straw was stirred up with a wooden fork from time to time, and then taken away. The grain and chaff were next poured from a dish on a windy day. The wind carried the chaff away, and the wheat or barley fell in a golden pile at the winnower's feet. Later a fanning mill was used to blow away the chaff. The simplest method of all is that of holding a few heads in the hollow palm of one hand and rubbing them with the palm of the other. The straw is allowed to fall to the ground. The chaff is blown away by a puff of the breath and the operation is complete. The modern threshing machine imitates this process. The hollowed palm in which the heads are held is replaced by a curved surface, called a concave, studded with stout metal teeth. The rubbing of the upper palm is replaced by a swiftly revolving cylinder, also studded with teeth. Instead of falling to the ground, the empty straw is carried away by an endless apron. The chaff, short bits of straw, and kernels pass over sieves, through which, in lieu of the breath, a current of wind is driven from below by the paddles of a swiftly revolving fan. Machines of this sort were developed in the famous winter wheat region of the Genesee Valley of New York. About 1834 the Buffalo Pitts was manufactured at Buffalo by the Pitts Brothers. The earlier machines were operated by a treadmill. Later, the horse-power was introduced, and last of all the traction steam engine. The latter burns straw for fuel and is geared to draw the thresher from place to place.

The modern steam thresher is a model of economy and efficiency. Instead of requiring twelve horses to work on the horse-power, one team is needed to draw water for the engine. A huge belt connects the engine with the thresher. The pitchers lay the bundles on an endless apron. As the bundles advance, the bands are cut by projecting knives, and the loosened grain is fed into the maw of the machine. The empty straw is carried away by an automatic shaker. The chaff is blown away from the kernels on the sieves of the fanning mill. The chaff rejoins the straw and both are sent flying through a large pipe to the straw stack. Cog work causes the pipe or stacker to swing from side to side so as to build up a stack without assistance. The kernels fall from the sieve of the fanning mill into an elevator that carries the grain up in a shute and delivers it, bushel by bushel, into the farmer's sack, or into his wagon box. The wielder of the flail was satisfied with a sack or two of grain a day. The earliest machines driven by a pair of weary animals climbing a tedious treadmill all day long threshed at most fifty bushels of wheat a day; five hundred bushels made a good day's work for the horse-power machine. The modern steam thresher which replaces bandcutters, feeders, measurers, and strawstackers by never-wearying machinery, threshes 2,000 bushels of wheat a day with ease.

See Treadmill; Agriculture; and the various cereals.