Chapter VIII: Part 8

FLORIO, GIOVANNI (1553?-1625), English writer, was born in London about 1553. He was of Tuscan origin, his parents being Waldenses who had fled from persecution in the Valtelline and taken refuge in England. His father, Michael Angelo Florio, was pastor of an Italian Protestant congregation in London in 1550. He was attached to the household of Sir William Cecil, but dismissed on a charge of immorality. He dedicated a book on the Italian language to Henry Herbert, and may have been a tutor in the family of William Herbert, earl of Pembroke. Anthony a Wood says that the Florios left England on the accession of Queen Mary, but returned after her death. The son resided for a time at Oxford, and was appointed, about 1576 tutor to the son of Richard Barnes, bishop of Durham, then studying at Magdalen College. In 1578 Florio published a work entitled _First Fruits, which yield Familiar Speech, Merry Proverbs, Witty Sentences, and Golden Sayings_ (4to). This was accompanied by _A Perfect Induction to the Italian and English Tongues_. The work was dedicated to the earl of Leicester. Three years later Florio was admitted a member of Magdalen College, and became a teacher of French and Italian in the university. In 1591 appeared his _Second Fruits, to be gathered of Twelve Trees, of divers but delightsome Tastes to the Tongues of Italian and English men_; to which was annexed the _Garden of Recreation, yielding six thousand Italian Proverbs_ (4to). These manuals contained an outline of the grammar, a selection of dialogues in parallel columns of Italian and English, and longer extracts from classical Italian writers in prose and verse. Florio had many patrons; he says that he "lived some years" with the earl of Southampton, and the earl of Pembroke also befriended him. His Italian and English dictionary, entitled _A World of Words_, was published in folio in 1598. After the accession of James I., Florio was named French and Italian tutor to Prince Henry, and afterwards became a gentleman of the privy chamber and clerk of the closet to the queen, whom he also instructed in languages. His _magnum opus_ is the admirable translation of the _Essayes on Morall, Politike, and Millitarie Discourses of Lo. Michaell de Montaigne_, published in folio in 1603 in three books, each dedicated to two noble ladies. A second edition in 1613 was dedicated to the queen. Special interest attaches to the first edition from the circumstance that of the several copies in the British Museum library one bears the autograph of Shakespeare--long received as genuine but now supposed to be by an 18th-century hand--and another that of Ben Jonson. It was suggested by Warburton that Florio is satirized by Shakespeare under the character of Holofernes, the pompous pedant of _Love's Labour's Lost_, but it is much more likely, especially as he was one of the earl of Southampton's proteges, that he was among the personal friends of the dramatist, who may well have gained his knowledge of Italian and French from him. He had married the sister of the poet Daniel, and had friendly relations with many writers of his day. Ben Jonson sent him a copy of _Volpone_ with the inscription, "To his loving father and worthy friend Master John Florio, Ben Jonson seals this testimony of his friendship and love." He is characterized by Wood, in _Athenae Oxonienses_, as a very useful man in his profession, zealous for his religion, and deeply attached to his adopted country. He died at Fulham, London, in the autumn of 1625.

FLORIS, FRANS, or more correctly FRANS DE VRIENDT, called FLORIS (1520-1570), Flemish painter, was one of a large family trained to the study of art in Flanders. Son of a stonecutter, Cornelis de Vriendt, who died at Antwerp in 1538, he began life as a student of sculpture, but afterwards gave up carving for painting. At the age of twenty he went to Liege and took lessons from Lambert Lombard, a pupil of Mabuse, whose travels in Italy had transformed a style truly Flemish into that of a mongrel Leonardesque. Following in the footsteps of Mabuse, Lambert Lombard had visited Florence, and caught the manner of Salviati and other pupils of Michelangelo and Del Sarto. It was about the time when Schoreel, Coxcie and Heemskerk, after migrating to Rome and imitating the masterpieces of Raphael and Buonarroti, came home to execute Dutch-Italian works beneath the level of those produced in the peninsula itself by Leonardo da Pistoia, Nanaccio and Rinaldo of Mantua. Fired by these examples, Floris in his turn wandered across the Alps, and appropriated without assimilation the various mannerisms of the schools of Lombardy, Florence and Rome. Bold, quick and resolute, he saw how easy it would be to earn a livelihood and acquire a name by drawing for engravers and painting on a large scale after the fashion of Vasari. He came home, joined the gild of Antwerp in 1540, and quickly opened a school from which 120 disciples are stated to have issued. Floris painted strings of large pictures for the country houses of Spanish nobles and the villas of Antwerp patricians. He is known to have illustrated the fable of Hercules in ten compositions, and the liberal arts in seven, for Claes Jongeling, a merchant of Antwerp, and adorned the duke of Arschot's palace of Beaumont with fourteen colossal panels. Comparatively few of his works have descended to us, partly because they came to be contemned for their inherent defects, and so were suffered to perish, partly because they were soon judged by a different standard from that of the Flemings of the 16th century. The earliest extant canvas by Floris is the "Mars and Venus ensnared by Vulcan" in the Berlin Museum (1547), the latest a "Last Judgment" (1566) in the Brussels gallery. Neither these nor any of the intermediate works at Alost, Antwerp, Copenhagen, Dresden, Florence, Leau, Madrid, St Petersburg and Vienna display any charm of originality in composition or in form. Whatever boldness and force they may possess, or whatever principles they may embody, they are mere appropriations of Italian models spoiled in translation or adaptation. Their technical execution reveals a rapid hand, but none of the lustre of bright colouring; and Floris owed much of his repute to the cleverness with which his works were transferred to copper by Jerome Cock and Theodore de Galle. Whilst Floris was engaged on a Crucifixion of 27 ft., and a Resurrection of equal size, for the grand prior of Spain, he was seized with illness, and died on the 1st of October 1570 at Antwerp.

FLORUS, Roman historian, flourished in the time of Trajan and Hadrian. He compiled, chiefly from Livy, a brief sketch of the history of Rome from the foundation of the city to the closing of the temple of Janus by Augustus (25 B.C.). The work, which is called _Epitome de T. Livio Bellorum omnium annorum DCC Libri duo_, is written in a bombastic and rhetorical style, and is rather a panegyric of the greatness of Rome, whose life is divided into the four periods of infancy, youth, manhood and old age. It is often wrong in geographical and chronological details; but, in spite of its faults, the book was much used in the middle ages. In the MSS. the writer is variously given as Julius Florus, Lucius Anneus Florus, or simply Annaeus Florus. From certain similarities of style he has been identified with Publius Annius Florus, poet, rhetorician and friend of Hadrian, author of a dialogue on the question whether Virgil was an orator or poet, of which the introduction has been preserved.

The best editions are by O. Jahn (1852), C. Halm (1854), which contain
the fragments of the Virgilian dialogue. There is an English
translation in Bohn's _Classical Library_.

FLORUS, JULIUS, poet, orator, and jurist of the Augustan age. His name has been immortalized by Horace, who dedicated to him two of his _Epistles_ (i. 3; ii. 2), from which it would appear that he composed lyrics of a light, agreeable kind. The statement of Porphyrion, the old commentator on Horace, that Florus himself wrote satires, is probably erroneous, but he may have edited selections from the earlier satirists (Ennius, Lucilius, Varro). Nothing is definitely known of his personality, except that he was one of the young men who accompanied Tiberius on his mission to settle the affairs of Armenia. He has been variously identified with Julius Florus, a distinguished orator and uncle of Julius Secundus, an intimate friend of Quintilian (_Instit_. x. 3, 13); with the leader of an insurrection of the Treviri (Tacitus, _Ann_. iii. 40); with the Postumus of Horace (_Odes_, ii. 14) and even with the historian Florus.

FLORUS, PUBLIUS ANNIUS, Roman poet and rhetorician, identified by some authorities with the historian Florus (q.v.). The introduction to a dialogue called _Virgilius orator an poeta_ is extant, in which the author (whose name is given as Publius Annius Florus) states that he was born in Africa, and at an early age took part in the literary contests on the Capitol instituted by Domitian. Having been refused a prize owing to the prejudice against African provincials, he left Rome in disgust, and after travelling for some time set up at Tarraco as a teacher of rhetoric. Here he was persuaded by an acquaintance to return to Rome, for it is generally agreed that he is the Florus who wrote the well-known lines quoted together with Hadrian's answer by Aelius Spartianus (_Hadrian_ 16). Twenty-six trochaic tetrameters, _De qualitate vitae_, and five graceful hexameters, _De rosis_, are also attributed to him. Florus is important as being the first in order of a number of 2nd-century African writers who exercised a considerable influence on Latin literature, and also the first of the _poetae neoterici_ or _novelli_ (new-fashioned poets) of Hadrian's reign, whose special characteristic was the use of lighter and graceful metres (anapaestic and iambic dimeters), which had hitherto found little favour.

The little poems will be found in E. Bahrens, _Poetae Latini minores_
(1879-1883); for an unlikely identification of Florus with the author
of the _Pervigilium Veneris_ (q.v.) see E.H.O. Muller, _De P. Annio
Floro poeta et de Pervigilio Veneris_ (1855), and, for the poet's
relations with Hadrian, F. Eyssenhardt, _Hadrian und Florus_ (1882);
see also F. Marx in Pauly-Wissowa's _Realencyclopadie_, i. pt. 2
(1894).

FLOTOW, FRIEDRICH FERDINAND ADOLF VON, FREIHERR (1812-1883), German composer, was born on his father's estate at Teutendorf, in Mecklenburg, on the 27th of April 1812. Destined originally for the diplomatic profession, his passion for music induced his father to send him to Paris to study under Reicha. But the outbreak of the revolution in 1830 caused his return home, where he busied himself writing chamber-music and operetta until he was able to return to Paris. There he produced _Pierre et Catherine, Rob Roy, La Duchesse de Guise_, but made his first real success with Le _Naufrage de la Meduse_ at the Renaissance Theatre in 1838. Greater, however, was the success which attended _Stradella_ (1844) and _Martha_ (1847), which made the tour of the world. In 1848 Flotow was again driven home by the Revolution, and in the course of a few years he produced _Die Grossfurstin_ (1850), _Indra_ (1853), _Rubezahl_ (1854), _Hilda_ (1855) and _Albin_ (1856). From 1856 to 1863 he was director (Intendant) of the Schwerin opera, but in the latter year he returned to Paris, where in 1869 he produced _L'Ombre_. From that time to the date of his death he lived in Paris or on his estate near Vienna. He died on the 24th of January 1883. Of his concert-music only the _Jubelouverture_ is now ever heard. His strength lay in the facility of his melodies.

FLOTSAM, JETSAM and LIGAN, in English law, goods lost at sea, as distinguished from goods which come to land, which are technically designated _wreck_. Jetsam (the same word as _jettison_, from Lat. _jactare_, to throw) is when goods are cast into the sea, and there sink and remain under water; flotsam (_floatson_, from _float_, Lat. _flottare_) is where they continue floating on the surface of the waves; ligan (or _lagan_, from _lay_ or _lie_) is where they are sunk in the sea, but tied to a cork or buoy in order to be found again. Flotsam, jetsam and ligan belong to the sovereign in the absence only of the true owner. Wreck, on the other hand (i.e. goods cast on shore), was by the common law adjudged to the sovereign in any case, because it was said by the loss of the ship all property was gone out of the original owner. This singular distinction which treated goods washed ashore as lost, and goods on and in the sea as not lost, is no doubt to be explained by the primitive practice of plundering wrecked ships. (See WRECK.)

FLOUNDER, a common term for flat-fish. The name is also more specially given to certain varieties, according to local usage. Thus the _Pleuronectes flesus_ is the common flounder of English terminology, found along the coasts of northern Europe from the Bristol Channel to Iceland. It is particularly partial to fresh water, ascending the Rhine as far as Cologne. It rarely exceeds a length of 12 in. or a weight of 1-1/2 lb. In American terminology the principal fish of the name are the "summer flounders" or "deep-sea flounders," also known in America as "plaice" (_Paralichthys dentatus_), as long as 3 ft. and as heavy as 15 lb.; the "four-spotted flounders" (_Paralichthys oblongus_); the "common" or "winter" flounder (_Pseudopleuronectes americanus_); the "diamond flounder" (_Hysopsetta guttulata_); and the "pole flounder" (_Glyptocephalus cynoglossus_).

FLOUR and FLOUR MANUFACTURE. The term "flour" (Fr. _fleur_, flower, i.e. the best part) is usually applied to the triturated farinaceous constituents of the wheat berry (see WHEAT); it is, however, also used of other cereals and even of leguminoids when ground into a fine powder, and of many other substances in a pulverulent state, though in these cases it is usual to speak of rye flour, bean flour, &c. The flour obtained from oats is generally termed oatmeal. In Great Britain wheaten flour was commonly known in the 16th and 17th centuries as meal, and up to the beginning of the 19th century, or perhaps later, the term mealing trade was not infrequently used of the milling trade.

Primitive grinding.

The ancestor of the millstone was apparently a rounded stone about the size of a man's fist, with which grain or nuts were pounded and crushed into a rude meal. These stones are generally of hard sandstone and were evidently used against another stone, which by dint of continual hammering was broken into hollows. Sometimes the crusher was used on the surface of rocks. St Bridget's stone, on the shore of Lough Macnean, is supposed to have been a primitive Irish mill; there are many depressions in the face of the table-like rock, and it is probable that round this stone several women (for in early civilization the preparation of flour was peculiarly the duty of the women) would stand and grind, or rather pound, meal. Many such stones, known as Bullan stones, still exist in Ireland. Similar remains are found in the Orkneys and Shetlands, and it is on record that some of these stones have been used for flour-making within historic times. Richard Bennett in his _History of Corn Milling_ remarks that the Seneca Indians to this day boil maize and crush it into a paste between loose stones. In the same way the Omahas pound this cereal in holes in the rocks, while the Oregon Indians parch and pound the capsules of the yellow lily, much after the fashion described by Herodotus in his account of the ancient Egyptians. In California the Indian squaws make a sort of paste by crushing acorns between a round stone or "muller," and a cuplike hollow in the surface of a rock. Crushing stones are of different shapes, ranging from the primitive ball-like implement to an elongated shape resembling the pestle of a mortar. Mullers of the latter type are not infrequent among prehistoric remains in America, while Dr Schliemann discovered several specimens of the globular form on the reputed site of the city of Troy, and also among the ruins of Mycenae. As a matter of fact stone mullers survived in highly civilized countries into modern days, if indeed they are now altogether extinct.

Saddle-stone.

The saddle-stone is the connecting link between the primitive pounder, or muller, and the quern, which was itself the direct ancestor of the millstones still used to some extent in the manufacture of flour. The saddle-stone, the first true grinding implement, consisted of a stone with a more or less concave face on which the grain was spread, and in and along this hollow surface it was rubbed and ground into coarse meal. Saddle-stones have been discovered in the sand caves of Italy, among the lake dwellings of Switzerland, in the dolmens of France, in the pit dwellings of the British Isles, and among the remains of primitive folk all the world over. The Romans of the classical period seem to have distinguished the saddle-stone from the quern. We find allusions to the _mola trusatilis_, which may be translated "the thrusting mill"; this would fairly describe a backwards and forwards motion. The _mola versatilis_ evidently referred to the revolving millstone or quern. In primitive parts of the world the saddle-stone is not yet extinct, as for instance in Mexico. It is known as the _metata_, and is used both for grinding maize and for making the maize cakes known as tortillas. The same implement is apparently still in use in some parts of South America, notably in Chile.

Quern.

According to Richard Bennett, the quern, the first complete milling machine, originated in Italy and is in all probability not older than the 2nd century B.C. This is, however, a controverted point. Querns are still used in most primitive countries, nor is it certain that they have altogether disappeared from remoter districts of Scotland and Ireland. Whatever was their origin, they revolutionized flour milling. The rotary motion of millstones became the essential principle of the trituration of grain, and exists to-day in the rolls of the roller mill. The early quern appears to have differed from its descendants in that it was somewhat globular in shape, the lower stone being made conical, possibly with the idea that the ground flour should be provided with a downward flow to enable it to fall from the stones. This type did not, however, persist. Gradually the convexity disappeared and the surface of the two stones became flat or very nearly so. In the upper stone was a species of funnel, through which the grain passed as through a hopper, making its way thence, as the stone revolved, into the space between the running and the bed stone. The ground meal was discharged at the periphery. The runner, or upper stone, was provided with a wooden handle by which the stone was revolved. The typical Roman mill of the Augustan age may be seen at Pompeii. Here, in what is believed to have been a public _pistrinum_ or mill, were found four pairs of millstones. The circular base of these mills is 5 ft. in diameter and 1 ft. high, and upon it was fastened the _meta_, a blunt cone about 2 ft. high, on which fitted the upper millstone or _catillus_, also conical. These mills were evidently rotated by slave labour, as there was no room for the perambulation of a horse or donkey, while the side-lugs in which the handle-bars were inserted are plainly visible. Slave labour was generally used up to the introduction of Christianity, but was finally abolished by the emperor Constantine, though even after his edict mills continued to be driven by criminals.

Use of power.

The Romans are credited by some authorities with having first applied power to the driving of millstones, which they connected with water-wheels by a horizontal spindle through the intervention of bevel gearing. But long after millstones had been harnessed to water power slave labour was largely employed as a motive force. The watermill of the Romans was introduced at a relatively early period into Britain. Domesday Book shows that England was covered by mills of a kind at the time of the Norman conquest, and mentions some 500 mills in the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk alone. No doubt the _mola_ of Domesday Book consisted of one pair of stones connected by rude gearing with a water-wheel. Windmills are said to have been introduced by the Crusaders, who brought them from the East. Steam power is believed to have been first used in a British flour mill towards the close of the 18th century, when Boulton & Watt installed a steam engine in the Albion Flour Mills in London, erected under the care of John Rennie. Another great engineer, Sir William Fairbairn, in the early days of the 19th century, left the impress of his genius on the mill and all its accessories. He was followed by other clever engineers, and in the days immediately preceding the roller period many improvements were introduced as regards the balancing and driving of millstones. The introduction of the blast and exhaust to keep the stones cool was a great step in advance, while the substitution of silk gauze for woollen or linen bolting cloth, about the middle of the 19th century, marked another era in British milling. Millstones, as used just before the introduction of roller milling, were from 4 to 4-1/2 ft. in diameter by some 12 in. in thickness, and were usually made of a siliceous stone, known as buhr-stone, much of which came from the quarry of La Ferte-sous-Jouarre, in France.

Roller milling.

Nine-tenths, or perhaps ninety-nine hundredths, of all the flour consumed in Great Britain is made in roller mills, that is, mills in which the wheat is broken and floured by means of rollers, some grooved in varying degrees of fineness, some smooth, their work being preceded and supplemented by a wide range of other machinery. All roller mills worthy of the name are completely automatic, that is to say, from the time the raw material enters the mill warehouse till it is sacked, either in the shape of finished flour or of offals, it is touched by no human hand.

The history of roller milling extends back to the first half of the 19th century. Roller mills, that is to say, machines fitted with rolls set either horizontally, or vertically, or obliquely, for the grinding of corn, are said to have been used as far back as the 17th century, but if this be so it is certain that they were only used in a tentative manner. Towards the middle of the 19th century the firm of E.R. & F. Turner, of Ipswich, began to build roller mills for breaking wheat as a preliminary to the conversion of the resultant middlings on millstones. The rolls were made of chilled iron and were provided with serrated edges, which must have exercised a tearing action on the integuments of the berry. These mills were built to the design of a German engineer, of the name of G.A. Buchholz, and were exhibited at the London exhibition of 1862, but they never came into general use. It has also been stated that as early as 1823 a French engineer, named Collier, of Paris, patented a roller mill, while five years later a certain Malar took out another French patent, the specification of which speaks of grooves and differential speeds. But the direct ancestors of the roller mills of the present day were brought out some time in the third decade of the 19th century by a Swiss engineer named Sulzberger. His apparatus was rather cumbrous, and the chilled iron rolls with which it was fitted consumed a large amount of power relatively to the work effected. But the Pester Walz-Muhle, founded in 1839 by Count Szechenyi, a Hungarian nobleman, which took its name from the roller mills with which it was equipped by Sulzberger, was for many years a great success; some of its roller mills are said to have been kept at work for upwards of forty years, and one at least is preserved in the museum at Budapest.

Hungarian practice.

It may be noted that Hungarian wheat is hard and flinty and well adapted for treatment by rolls. Moreover, gradual reduction, as now understood, was more or less practised in Hungary, even before the introduction of roller milling. Though millstones, and not rolls, were used, yet the wheat was not floured at one operation, as in typical low or flat grinding, but was reduced to flour in several successive operations. In the first break the stones would be placed just wide enough apart to "end" the wheat, and in each succeeding operation the stones were brought closer together. But Hungarian milling was not then automatic in the sense in which British millers understand the word. For a long time a great deal of hand labour was employed in the merchant mills of Budapest in carrying about products from one machine to another for further treatment. This practice may have been partly due to the cheap labour available, but it was also the deliberate policy of Hungarian millers to handle in this way the middlings and fine "dunst," because it was maintained that only thus could certain products be delivered to the machine by which they were to be treated in the perfection of condition. The results were good so far as the finished products were concerned, but in the light of modern automatic milling the system appears uneconomical. Not only did it postulate an inordinately large staff, but it further increased the labour bill by the demand it made on the number of sub-foremen who were occupied in classifying, largely by touch, the various products, and directing the labourers under them. Hungarian milling still differs widely from milling as practised in Great Britain in being a longer system. This is due to the more minute subdivision of products, a necessary consequence of the large number of grades of flour and offals made in Hungary, where there are many intermediate varieties of middlings and "dunst" for which no corresponding terms are available in an English miller's vocabulary.

Semolina, middlings, dunst.

It will be convenient here to explain the meaning of three terms constantly used by millers, namely, _semolina_, _middlings_ and _dunst_. These three products of roller mills are practically identical in composition, but represent different stages in the process of reducing the endosperm of the wheat to flour. A wheat berry is covered by several layers of skin, while under these layers is the floury kernel or endosperm. This the break or grooved rolls tend to tear and break up. The largest of these more or less cubical particles are known as semolina, whilst the medium-sized are called middlings and the smallest sized termed dunst. The last is a German word, with several meanings, but is used in this particular sense by German and Austrian millers, from whom it was doubtless borrowed by the pioneers of roller milling in England. If we were to lay a sample of fairly granular flour beside a sample of small dunst the two would be easy to distinguish, but place a magnifying glass over the flour and it would look very like the dunst. If we were to repeat this experiment on dunst and fine middlings, the former would under the glass present a strong resemblance to the middlings. The same effect would be produced by the putting side by side of large middlings and small semolina. This is a broad description of semolina, middlings and dunst. Semolina and middlings are more apt to vary in appearance than dunst, because the latter is the product of the later stages of the milling process and represents small particles of the floury kernel tolerably free from such impurities as bran or fluff. The flour producing middlings must not be confounded with the variety of wheat offal which is also known to many English millers as middlings. This consists of husk or bran, more or less comminuted, and with a certain proportion of floury particles adherent. It is only fit for feeding beasts.

Porcelain rolls.

The spread of roller milling on the continent of Europe was undoubtedly accelerated by the invention of porcelain rolls, by Friedrich Wegmann, a Swiss miller, which were brought into general use in the seventh decade of the 19th century, and are still widely employed. They are admirably fitted for the reduction of semolina, middlings and dunst into flour; and for reducing pure middlings, that is, middlings containing no bran or wheat husk, there is perhaps nothing that quite equals them. They were introduced into Great Britain in 1877, or thereabouts, and were used for several years, but ultimately they almost disappeared from British mills. This was partly due to the fact that as made at that date they were rather difficult to work, as it was not easy to keep the rolls perfectly parallel. Another drawback was their inadaptability to over-heavy feeds, to which the British, and perhaps still more the American, miller is frequently obliged to resort. However, since the beginning of the 20th century some of the most advanced flour mills in England have again taken to using porcelain rolls for some part of their reduction process.

Roller milling in England.

The birth of roller milling in Great Britain may be said to date from 1872, when Oscar Oexle, a German milling engineer, erected a set of roller mills in the Tradeston Mills, in Glasgow. This was long before the introduction of automatic roller mills. But the foundations of the millstone system were not seriously disturbed till 1877, when a party of leading British and Irish millers visited Vienna and Budapest with the object of studying roller milling in its native home. In 1878 J.H. Carter installed in the mill of J. Boland, of Dublin, what was probably the first complete automatic roller plant erected in the United Kingdom, and in 1881 a milling exhibition held at the Royal Agricultural Hall, London, showed the automatic roller system in complete operation. From that time the roller system made great progress. By 1885 many of the leading British millers had installed full roller plants, and in the succeeding ten years small roller plants were installed in many country mills. For a time there was a transition stage in which there was in operation a number of so-called "combined" plants, that is to say, mills in which the wheat was broken on millstones or disk mills, while the middlings were reduced by smooth rolls; but these gradually dropped out of being.

Well-found British flour mills at the present time are probably the best fitted in the world, and as a whole have nothing to fear from comparison with their American competitors. It is true that American millers were rather quicker to copy Hungarian milling methods so far as gradual reduction was concerned. But from about 1880 the British miller was quite awake to his position and was straining every nerve to provide himself with a plant capable of dealing with every kind of wheat. It has often been said that he commands the wheat of the whole world. This is true in a sense, but it is not true that he can always command the exact kind of wheat he requires at the price required to meet foreign competition. Therein he is at a disadvantage. But engineers have done their best to meet this weak point, and by their assistance he is able to compete under almost all conditions with the millers of the whole world.

_Processes of Milling._--Fully to appreciate the various processes of modern milling, it must be remembered not only that the wheat as delivered at the mill is dusty and mixed with sand and even more objectionable refuse, but also that it contains many light grains and seeds of other plants. It is not therefore sufficient for the miller to be able to reduce the grain to flour on the most approved principles; he must also have at command the means of freeing it from foreign substances, and further of "conditioning" it, should it be damp or over dry and harsh. Again, his operations must be conducted with reference to the structure of the wheat grain. The wheat berry is a fruit, not a seed, the actual seed being the germ or embryo, a kidney-shaped body which is found at the base of the berry and is connected with the plumule or root. The germ is tough in texture and is in roller milling easily separated from the rest of the berry, being flattened instead of crushed by the rolls and thus readily sifted from the stock. The germ contains a good deal of fatty matter, which, if allowed to remain, would not increase the keeping qualities of the flour. Botanists distinguish five skins on the berry--epidermis, epicarp, endicarp, episperm and embryous membrane--but for practical purposes the number of integuments may be taken as three. The inner skin is often as thick as the outer and second skins together, which are largely composed of woody fibre; it contains the cerealin or aleurone cells, but although these are made up of a certain proportion of proteids, on account of the discolouring and diastasic action of the cerealin in flour they are best eliminated. The endosperm, or floury kernel, coming next to the inner skin, consists of starch granules which are caught as it were in the minute meshes of a net. This network is the gluten, and it may be noted that these meshes are not of equal consistency throughout the berry, but are usually finer and more dense near the husk than in the interior of the kernel. This glutinous portion is of great importance to the baker because on its quantity and quality depends the "strength" or rising power of the flour, and the aim of modern roller milling is to retain it as completely as possible, a matter of some difficulty owing to its close adherence to the husk, especially in the richest wheats. Another organ of the wheat berry which has a most important bearing on the work of the miller is the placenta, which is in effect a cord connecting the berry with its stalk or straw. The placenta serves to filter the food which the plant sucks up from the ground; it passes up the crease of the berry, and is enfolded in the middle skin, being protected on the outer side by the first and having the third or inner skin on its other side. A good deal of the matters filtered by the placenta are mineral in their nature, and such portions as are not digested remain in the crease. This is the matter which millers call "crease dirt." It is highly discolouring to flour, and must be carefully eliminated. The fuzzy end of the berry known as the beard also has a distinct function; its hairs are in reality tubes which serve to carry off superfluous moisture. They have, in common with the bran, no nutritive value. (See also WHEAT.)

In the old "flat" or "low" milling the object was to grind as
perfectly as possible, at one operation, the central substance of the
grain, constituting the flour, and to separate it from the embryo and
outer skins constituting the bran. In "high" milling, on the other
hand, the grinding is effected in a series of operations, the aim
being to get as much semolina and middlings as possible from the
wheat, and to make as little flour as possible during the earlier or
"breaking" part of the process. It is impossible altogether to avoid
the production of flour at this stage, but properly set and worked
break-rolls will make as little as 15% of "break-flour," which is of
less value, being contaminated with crease dirt, and also because it
is weak owing to the absence of the gluten cells which adhere more
readily to the middlings. Whole wheaten flour, sometimes called Graham
flour, consists of the entire grain ground up to a uniform mass.

Dry cleaning.

Wheat cleaning has been well called the foundation of all good
milling. In the screen house, as the wheat-cleaning department of the
mill is termed, will be found an array of machinery almost equal in
range and variety to that in the mill itself. The wheat, drawn by an
elevator from the barge, or hoisted in sacks, is first treated by a
machine known as a warehouse separator. This apparatus accomplishes
its work by means of flat sieves, some of which will be of much
coarser mesh than others, and of air currents, the adjustment of which
is a more delicate task than might appear. The warehouse separator
serves to free dirty wheat of such impurities as lumps of earth,
stones, straws and sand, not to mention small seeds, also some maize,
oats and barley. Great care has to be exercised in all operations of
the screen house lest wheat should pass away with the screenings.
Besides the warehouse separator, which is made in different types and
sizes, grading and sorting cylinders, and what are known as cockle and
barley cylinders, are much used in the screen house. These cylinders
are provided with indents so shaped and of such size as to catch seeds
which are smaller than wheat, and reject grains, as of barley or oats,
which are longer than wheat. Sorting cylinders should be followed by
machines known as scourers, the function of which is to free the wheat
from adherent impurities. These machines are of different types, but
all depend on percussive action. A vertical scourer consists of a
number of steel or iron beaters attached to a vertical spindle which
revolves inside a metallic woven or perforated casing, the whole being
fitted with an effectual exhaust. Scourers with horizontal spindles
are also in great favour. Not every wheat is suitable for scouring,
but some wheats are so mingled with impurities that a severe action
between the beaters and the perforated case is absolutely necessary.
The most efficient scourer is that which frees the wheat from the
greatest amount of impurity with a minimum of abrasion. The beaters
should be adjustable to suit different kinds of wheat. Scourers are
followed by brush machines which are similar to the last and are of
three distinct types: solid, divided and cone brushes. In the solid
variety the brush surface is continuous around the circumference of a
revolving cylinder; in divided brushes there is often a set of beaters
or bars covered with brush but leaving intermediate spaces; while the
cone brush consists of beaters covered with fibre arranged like cones
around a vertical spindle. The object of all these brushes, the
cylinder containing them being fitted with an exhaust fan, is to
polish the wheat and remove adhering impurities which the percussive
action of the scourer may have failed to eliminate, also to remove the
beard or fuzzy end and any loose portions of the outer husk. But the
miller must be careful not to overdo the scouring action and
unnecessarily abrade the berry, else he will have trouble with his
flour, the triturated bran breaking under the rolls and producing
powder which will discolour the break flour. To remove such metallic
fragments as nails, pieces of wire, &c., magnets are used. These may
either be of horseshoe shape, in which case they are usually set at
the head of the wheat spouts, or they may consist of magnetized plates
set at angles over which the wheat will slide. It is not a bad plan to
place the magnets just before the first set of break-rolls, where they
should ensure the arrest of steel and iron particles, which might
otherwise get between the rolls and spoil the edges of their grooves,
and also do damage to the sifting machines. Mention must also be made
of the automatic scales which are used to check the milling value of
the wheat. In principle these machines are all the same, though
details of construction may vary. Each weigher is set for a given
weight of grain. As soon as the receiving hopper has poured through a
valve into the recipient or skip, which is hung at one end of a beam
scale, a load of grain sufficient to overcome the weight hung at the
other end of the beam, the inlet of grain is automatically cut off and
the skip is discharged, automatically returning to take another
charge. Each weighing is automatically recorded on a dial. In this way
a record can be kept of the gross weight of the uncleaned wheat
entering the warehouse and of the net weight of the cleaned wheat. The
difference between the two weighings will, of course, represent the
loss by cleaning. The percentage of flour obtained from a given wheat
can be ascertained in the mill itself. In practice the second weigher
is placed just before the first break.

Wet cleaning and conditioning.

The cleansing of wheat by washing only became a fine art at the close
of the 19th century, though it was practised in the north of England
some twenty years earlier. Briefly it may be said that certain wheats
are washed to free them from extraneous matters such as adherent earth
and similar impurities which could not be removed by dry cleaning
without undue abrasion. Such wheats are Indians, Persians and hard
Russians, and these require not only washing but also conditioning, by
which is meant mellowing, before going to the rolls. With another
class of wheats, such as the softer Russians and Indians, spring
Americans and Canadians, hard American winters, Californians and the
harder River Plates, washing and conditioning by heat is also
desirable, though care must be exercised not to let the moisture
penetrate into the endosperm or floury portion of the kernel. In a
third and distinct class fall soft wheats, such as many kinds of
Plates, soft Russians and English wheat. It is generally admitted that
while wheat of the first two divisions will benefit from the
application of both moisture and heat, wheat of the third class must
be washed with great circumspection. The object of washing machines is
to agitate the wheat in water till the adherent foreign matters are
washed off and any dirt balls broken up and drained off in the waste
water. To this end some washers are fitted with Archimedean worm
conveyors set either at an inclined angle or horizontally or
vertically; or the washer may consist of a barrel revolving in a tank
partly filled with water. Another function of washing machines is to
separate stones of the same size which are found in several varieties
of wheat. This separation is effected by utilizing a current of water
as a balance strong enough to carry wheat but not strong enough to
carry stones or bodies of greater specific gravity than wheat. This
current may be led up an inclined worm or may flow horizontally over a
revolving tray. The washer is followed by a whizzer, which is an
apparatus intended to free the berry by purely mechanical means from
superfluous moisture. The typical whizzer is a vertical column fed at
the bottom and delivering at the top. The wet wheat ascends by
centrifugal force in a spiral direction round the column to the top,
and by the time it is discharged from the spout at the top it has
thrown off from its outer skin almost all its moisture, the water
escaping through the perforated cover of the machine. But there still
remains a certain amount of water which has penetrated the integuments
more or less deeply, and to condition the berry it is treated by a
combination of hot and cold air. The wheat is passed between
perforated metal plates and subjected to a draught first of hot and
then of cold air. The perforated plates are usually built in the shape
of a column, or leg as it is often called, and this is provided with
two air chambers, an upper one serving as a reservoir for hot, and the
lower for cold air. The air from both chambers is discharged by
pressure through the descending layers of wheat, which should not be
more than an inch thick; the air is drawn in by a steel-plate fan,
which is often provided with a divided casing, one side being used for
cold, and the other for hot air. Coupled with the hot air side is a
heater consisting of a series of circulating steam-heated pipes. The
temperature of the heated air can be regulated by the supply of steam
to the heater. This process of washing and conditioning, one of the
most important in a flour mill, is characteristically British; millers
have to deal with wheats of the most varied nature, and one object of
conditioning is to bring hard and harsh, soft and weak wheats as
nearly as possible to a common standard of condition before being
milled. Wheat is sometimes washed to toughen the bran, an end which
can also be attained by damping it from a spraying pipe as it passes
along an inclined worm. Another way of toughening bran is to pass
wheat through a heated cylinder, while again another process known as
steaming consists of injecting steam into wheat as it passes through a
metal hopper. Here the object is to cleanse to some extent, and to
warm and soften (by the condensation of moisture on the grain), but
these processes are imperfect substitutes for a full washing and
conditioning plant. Hard wheats will not be injured by a fairly long
immersion in water, always provided the subsequent whizzing and
drying are efficiently carried out. The second class of semi-hard
wheats already mentioned must be run more quickly through the washer
and freed from the water as rapidly as possible. Still more is this
necessary with really soft wheats, such as soft River Plates and the
softer English varieties. Here an immersion of only a few seconds is
desirable, while the moisture left by the water must be immediately
and energetically thrown off by the whizzer before the grain enters
the drier. Treated thus, soft wheats may be improved by washing. It is
claimed that hard wheats, like some varieties of Indians, are
positively improved in flavour by conditioning, and this is probably
true; certain it is that English country millers, in seasons when
native wheat was scarce and dear, and Indian wheat was abundant and
cheap, have found the latter, mellowed by conditioning, to be an
excellent substitute.

Effect of damp.

Wheats which have been exposed to the action of water during harvest
do not necessarily yield unsound flour; the matter is a question of
the amount of moisture absorbed. But it must be remembered that it is
not so much the water itself which degrades the constituents of the
wheat (starch and gluten) as the chemical changes which the dampness
produces. Hence perhaps the best remedy which can be found for damp
wheat is to dry it as soon as it has been harvested, either by kiln or
steam drier at a heat not exceeding 120 deg. F., until the moisture
has been reduced to 10% of the whole grain. The flour made from wheat
so treated may be weak, but will not usually be unsound. The practice
of drying damp flour has also good results. Long before the roller
milling period it was found that only flour which had been dried (in a
kiln) could safely be taken on long sea voyages, especially when the
vessel had to navigate warm latitudes. It may be noted that in the
days of millstone milling it was far more difficult to produce good
keeping flour. The wheat berry being broken up and triturated in one
operation, the flour necessarily contained a large proportion of
branny particles in which cerealin, an active diastasic constituent,
was present in very sensible proportions. Again, the elimination of
the germ by the roller process is favourable to the production of a
sounder flour, because the germ contains a large amount of oleaginous
matter and has a strong diastasic action on imperfectly matured
starches. The tendency of flours containing germ to become rancid is
well marked. During the South African War of 1899-1902 the British
army supply department had a practical proof of the diastasic action
of branny particles in flour. Soldiers' bread is not usually of white
colour, and the military authorities not unnaturally believed that
comparatively low-grade flour, if sound, was eminently suitable for
use in the field bakeries. But in the climate of South Africa flour of
this description soon developed considerable acidity. Ultimately the
supply department gave up buying any but the driest patent flours, and
it is understood that the most suitable flour proved to be certain
patents milled in Minneapolis, U.S.A., from hard spring wheat. Not
only did they contain a minimum of branny and fibrous matters, but
they were also the driest that could be found.

Break-rolls.

After being cleaned the wheat berry is split and broken up into
increasingly fine pieces by fluted rolls or "breaks." In the earlier
years of roller milling it was usual to employ more breaks than is now
the case. The first pair of break-rolls used to be called the
splitting rolls, because their function was supposed to be to split
the berry longitudinally down its crease, so as to give the miller an
opportunity of removing the dirt between the two lobes of the berry by
means of a brush machine. The dirt was in many cases no more than the
placenta already described, which shrivelling up took, like all
vegetable fibre, a dark tint. The neat split along the crease was not,
however, achieved in more than 10% of the berries so treated. Where
such rolls are still in use they are really serving as a sort of
adjunct to the wheat-cleaning system. Four or five breaks are now
thought sufficient, but three breaks are not recommended, except in
very short systems for small country mills. Rolls are now used up to
60 in. in length, though in one of the most approved systems they
never exceed 40 in.; they are made of chilled iron, and for the
breaking of wheat are provided with grooving cut at a slight twist,
the spiral averaging 1/4 in. to the foot length, though for the last
set of break-rolls, which clean up the bran, the spiral is sometimes
increased to 1/2 in. per foot. The grooves should have sharp edges
because they do better work than when blunt, giving larger semolina
and middlings, with bran adherent in big flakes; small middlings, that
is, little pieces of the endosperm torn away by blunt grooves, and
comminuted bran, make the production of good class flour almost
impossible; cut bran, moreover, brings less money. The break-rolls
should never work by pressure, but nip the material fed between them
at a given point; to cut or shear, not to flatten and crush, is their
function. Rolls may be set either horizontally or vertically; an
oblique setting has also come into favour. The feed is of the utmost
importance to the correct working of a roller mill. The material
should be fed in an even stream, not too thick, and leaving no part of
the roll uncovered. The two rolls of each pair are run at unequal
speeds, 2-1/2 to 1 being the usual ratio on the three first breaks,
while the last break is often speeded at 3 to 1 or 3-1/2 to 1; in one
of the oblique mills the difference is obtained by making the diameter
of one roll 13 and of the other 10 in. and running them at equal
speed. For break-rolls up to 36 in. in length 9 in. is the usual
diameter; for longer rolls 10 in. is the standard. To do good work
rolls must run in perfect parallelism; otherwise some parts of the
material will pass untouched, while others will be treated too
severely.

Scalpers.