curious patterns wrought in the pavement, the leg-bones of sheep being used instead of small stones. They are stuck in the ground perpendicularly, so that nothing is visible but the hinge joint. This is the part upon which one treads. I was at first told that these were human bones, but soon discovered that the information was erroneous; though a Peruvian peon or working man assured me that they were "huesos de hombre y huesos de burro."* The leg-bones of the sheep, splintered and scraped, were formerly used in this country as pegs for sustaining slates or stone flakes on houses; probably because wood was too weak, while iron corroded, and copper nails were little known. The ready adaptation of animal remains to purposes of utility is seen in the country school-boy's conversion of the wing-bone of a goose into a case for pins and needles, steel pens, or gunpowder. A plug or small cork is used as a stopper.

In the older countries of Europe the quern or hand-mill is still known, and it is a familiar object all over the East. It may be seen almost any day, at work in the bazaars of India. It is frequently alluded to in the Scriptures; so that we find it in use in Egypt† at the time of Moses, among the Philistines at the period of the Judges, and currently throughout Palestine in the days of our Lord.§ It was in use among

* Bones of man and bones of the ass.

+ Exod. xi, 5. "From the firstborn of Pharaoh that sitteth upon his throne, 66 even unto the firstborn of the maidservant that is behind the mill." "And he [Samson] did grind in the prison house." "Whereas they made him at the querne grind,

Judg. xvi, 21.

Ah! nobil Sampson, strongest of mankind."-Chaucer. Judg. ix, 53. "A certain woman cast a piece of a millstone upon Abimelech's "head, and all to [completely] brake (not "break") his skull.” We know from the original, that this was the rider or upper millstone.

§ Matt. xxiv, 41. "Tweine wymmen schulen been gryndynge in o querne, "oon schal be taken and the tother lefte."-Wiclif's Version.

Luke xvii, 2. "It were better for him that a millstone were banged about his "neck, &c." This is the ass millstone, or lower one, which was frequently larger and of a harder material than the upper one. "Hard as a piece of the nether millstone."-Job xli, 24.

the Greeks* and Latins,t and is noticed as an ordinary English household implement by Shakspeare.‡ It was employed in the Isle of Skye in Dr. Johnson's time; § it is still in use in the West of Ireland to grind the first meal of the season; and its use has not yet entirely ceased in Wales or Cornwall. An interesting variety is that known

66

use.

as the Pot-quern, in which the upper stone sits within a groove of the lower. The one shown is from the collection of the Royal Irish Academy. "It is nine "inches in diameter and four

66

high; it stands on three feet, "and had evidently been long in

The top stone, with two handle-holes, is represented "in this figure, as also the meal hole, which is cut obliquely

"Grind, grind away mill

Pittacus too was a grinder,

And yet Mitylene is still

And suffers his edicts to bind her,
Grind, grind away mill."

+"For skant of vittale

Song of the Greek Women.

The cornes in quernes of stane they grand."-Douglas's Virgil. Though Douglas employed a term well known in his days, he was, in reality, in error. Virgil represents his heroes as using the crusher or grain-rubber, mentioned below; but this had disappeared in Scotland when Douglas wrote. "Nunc torrete igni fruges, nunc frangite saxo."

Virg., Georg. i, 267.

"Tum Cererem corruptam undis cerealiaque arma
Expediunt fessi rerum; frugesque receptas
Et torrere parant flammis et frangere saxo."

Ib., Eneid i, 177.

See Heyne's Note on the mode of preparing meal in the most ancient times. "Robin Goodfellow, are you not he

That fright the maidens of the villag'ry,

Skim milk, and sometimes labour at the quern."

Mids. Night's Dream ii, 1.

When the water mills of Skye and Raasa are too far distant, the housewives grind their oats with a quern or handmill.-Tour in the Hebrides.

|| Transactions of the Historic Society of Lanc. and Chesh., i, 40. The term " quern" is found in the Vocabularies, ranging over a period of four centuries. It is found in an Anglo-Saxon one of the eleventh, in a SemiSaxon one of the twelfth, in a Nominale, and also in an English Vocabulary of

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through the lower margin. This form of mill need not, of necessity, have been provided with a pivot, as the lip of the lower stone retained the upper in situ."*

But, previous to the invention of the quern, a still more simple instrument was employed; namely the triturating stone. This is a stone

from an ancient set of stone stairs. In 1863 I had one engraved from the Collection of the Royal Irish Academy; but it had a hole in the side, for the exit of the meal. The grinding operation was always performed by a rubber, similar in principle to a painter's muller. In some instances the rubber was cylindrical, and in others it was merely flattened on the lower side.

A WAY

29. Grain rubber, Africa.

66

66

the fifteenth. In the four cases respectively, the Latin word Mola is translated by " cwrn-stan," cweorn-stan," qwern-stone," and "quernes." It is also described by Alexander Neckam thus:-" Mola assit piperalis, et mola manualis." Mr. Wright remarks in a note, "the quern, or stones turned with the hand to "grind corn, (the domestic mill,) appears to have remained in constant use "since the time of the Romans, and has fallen into disuse only very recently, "in some parts of the country."

* Wilde's Catalogue, p. 108.

West Africa was forwarded to me by Mr. Albert Way. It appears further, that among a large number of stone implements discovered in shifting sand near Table Bay in South Africa, some very coarse crushing stones have been found. They seem to have been used for bruising grain and roots; or rather for grinding, as they are slightly worn at the edges. One in my own possession, obtained from Ireland, is a very coarse grit stone.* A polishing stone, for flint and stone. implements, given by Worsaae,t bears a close resemblance to a triturating stone.

Though they have been so extensively used in the past;

the Indian woman promptly placed upon it a handful of maize, knelt on the ground at one end of it, and with a rubbing stone converted the grain into coarse meal in a few seconds. I afterwards saw it in use in the market place at Santiago, where a woman was bruising boiled Indian corn, somewhat in the same way as country house-wives at home

A saddle-shaped stone and two rubbers of the early stone age, were found in a primitive hut near Anglesea. The Rev. W. Wynn Williams possesses no fewer than sixteen portions of the lower stones, and eleven grain-rubbers. One rubber weighs 6lbs. 2oz.: it is 8in. long, and 10 in. in circumference. Other such stones have been found in Cambridgeshire and Cornwall; and specimens exist from Soudan and Natal, in Africa. It was in use at Sidda; and as the grit mixes with the flour in the process of grinding, Sir Samuel Baker thinks that he has swallowed a good sized millstone at various times.Albert Way, Esq., " Notices of the Relics, &c."

+ Afbildninger, p. 10, fig. 12.

bruise potatoes to mingle with flour for bread.* With some difficulty I procured a specimen at Lota, nearly 300 miles south of Valparaiso; and succeeded in bringing it home.

The people have a superstition that a suitable triturating stone should be found by accident, and that the tool of a workman should never be lifted upon it to shape it; but this impression does not prevail everywhere, as is evident from the Dublin specimen just referred to, and from one in our Liverpool Town Museum. The latter is carefully made by chiselling; it has four feet formed out of the piece, and a circular neck and head at one end, like the swan-neck or snake-neck handle of metal ornaments and cups. The implement with which the native Australian crushes the Nardoo seeds is evidently a natural stone like that used in Chile.

At a great threshing floor, about seventy miles above Caldera and on the way to the Pass of the Andes, I noticed a very peculiar fork. It was of wood, a stalk of the vine with three projecting points in the same plane; and when the bark was peeled off and the points a little sharpened, it looked as if suitable for the purpose. I was surprised to see, a few weeks ago, in the collection of the Royal Irish Academy, a somewhat similar three-pronged implement of wood, which is supposed to be several centuries old. In the latter, the points are broader, suggesting the flukes of an eel spear; but both agree in being tridents, and in showing an ingenious adaptation of wood to purposes for which iron is commonly employed.

*The distinctive terms in our old Glossaries show the various ways in which bread was prepared. Thus "Subcinericius vel focarius, heorth-bacen hlaf" [a hearth-baked loaf]; "Clibanius, ofen-bacen hlaf";

Pugillaris, gyrdel-bred." Mayer's Vocab., pp. 41, 288.

In the Pictorial Vocabulary, there is a loaf (panis) of the fifteenth century given, which the reader may like to

see.

+ This reminds one of the Latin proverb respecting a poet; "non fit."

31. Loaf.

"Poeta nascitur