Chapter VI: Part 6

Sheep-skins, when simply tanned, are employed for inferior bookbinding, for leathering bellows, and for various other purposes for which a cheap leather is required. All the _whit-leather_, as it is termed, which is used for whip-lashes, bags, aprons, &c. is of sheep-skin; as are also the cheaper kinds of _wash-leather_, of which gloves, under-waistcoats, and other articles of dress, are made. Mock, or imitation morocco, and most of the other coloured and dyed leathers used for women’s and children’s shoes, carriage-linings, and the covering of stools, chairs, sofas, writing-tables, &c. are also made of sheep-skin.

Lamb-skins are mostly dressed white or coloured for gloves; and those of goats and kids supply the best qualities of light leather, the former being the material of the best morocco, while kid leather affords the finest material for gloves and ladies’ shoes. Leather from goat-skins, ornamented and sometimes gilt, was formerly used as a hanging or covering for walls.

Deer and antelope skins, dressed in oil, are used chiefly for riding breeches. Horse-hides, which, considering their size, are thin, are tanned and curried, and are used by the Harness Maker, especially for collars, and occasionally, when pared thin, for the upper leathers of ladies’ walking shoes. Dog-skins are thick and rough, and make excellent leather. Seal-skins produce a leather similar but inferior to that supplied by dog-skins; and hog-skins afford a thin but dense leather, which is used mostly for covering the seats of saddles.

Currying is the general name given to the various operations of dressing leather after the tanning is completed, by which the requisite smoothness, lustre, colour, and suppleness, are imparted. The processes of the Currier are various. The first is styled “dipping” the leather. It consists in moistening with water, and beating upon a trellis-work of wooden spars with a _mallet_ or _mace_. After this beating, by which the stiffness of the hide or skin is destroyed, it is laid over an inclined board, and scraped and cleaned, and, wherever it is too thick, pared or shaved down on the flesh side by the careful application of various two-handled knives, and then thrown again into water, and well scoured by rubbing the grain or hair side with pumice-stone, or with a piece of slatey grit, by which means the _bloom_, a whitish matter which is found upon the surface in tanning, is removed.

The leather is then rubbed with the _pommel_, a rectangular piece of hard wood, about twelve inches long by five broad, grooved on the under surface, and fastened to the hand. The Currier uses several of these instruments, with grooves of various degrees of fineness, and also, for some purposes, pommels of cork, which are not grooved at all. The object of this rubbing is to give grain and pliancy to the leather. The leather is then scraped with tools applied nearly perpendicular to its surface, and worked forcibly with both hands, to reduce such parts as may yet be left too thick, to a uniform substance. After this it is dressed with the _round knife_, a singular instrument which pares off the coarser fleshy parts of the skin. In addition to these operations, the Currier uses occasionally polishers of smooth wood or glass, for rubbing the surface of the leather; and when the leather is intended for the use of the shoemaker, he applies to it some kind of greasy composition called _dubbing_ or _stuffing_.

Leather is occasionally dressed “black on the grain,” or having the grain side instead of the flesh coloured. The currying operations in such a case are similar to those above described, but the finishing processes are rather different. The leather is rubbed with a grit-stone, to remove any wrinkles and smooth down the coarse grain. The grain is finally raised by repeatedly rubbing over the surface, in different directions, with the pommel or graining board.

Japanned leather of various kinds is used in coach making, harness making, and for various other purposes. Patent leather is covered with a coat of elastic japan, which gives a surface like polished glass, impermeable to water; and hides prepared in a more perfectly elastic mode of japanning, which will permit folding without cracking the surface, are called enamelled leather. Such leather has the japan annealed, something in the same mode as glass; the hides are laid between blankets, and subjected to the heat of an oven at a peculiar temperature during several hours.

THE HATTER.

The trade of the Hatter is confined to a few countries of Europe; but, as the fashion of hats is at present mostly restricted, both here and in most parts of the Continent, to those black stiff cylindrical coverings of silk which custom has ordained we shall wear, greatly to our own discomfort, and at a great expense, the business is of considerable importance, and the making of hats has grown into a large branch of industry. Before the introduction of that kind of silk which bears a long pile, like velvet, and is known as _plush_, beaver was the material principally used for hat making; but beaver hats are much more expensive, though they are now seldom made of the skin or fur of the beaver, which has grown remarkably scarce, in consequence of the land which the animals formerly occupied having become inhabited.

Beaver hats of the finest quality are made with lamb’s wool and the fur of English rabbits. To form the body of the hat, the wool and rabbit’s fur are separately _bowed_ by bringing a set of strings attached to a bow in contact with a heap of the material, and then striking the strings, so as to cause violent vibrations, and thus separate the filaments. The two substances are next bowed together until they are intimately mixed; after which the mass is spread evenly, covered with an oil-cloth, and pressed to the state of an imperfectly tangled felt. The next process is to cover the felt with a triangular piece of damp brown paper, and then to fold it in a damp cloth, and work it well with the hand, pressing and bending, rolling and unrolling it, until the interlacing or felting is much more perfect, and the mass is compact. The felt thus prepared is next taken to the wide brim of a boiler charged with hot water and beer grounds, and a small quantity of sulphuric acid; it is well rubbed and rolled until it no longer contracts. The felt is next stiffened with shellac, a solution of which is applied by means of a brush to both sides of the felt; after which it is heated in a stove, and by this means the whole substance becomes duly impregnated with the resin; this renders the hat nearly waterproof.

To form the nap of a hat, one half or three-fourths of an ounce of beaver, and some other less costly fur, are bowed together and imperfectly felted in the manner already described, and shaped the same as the body to which it is to be applied; that body is then softened by immersing it in the boiler, when the nap is applied and worked as in felting, until the required union is effected between the two bodies.

The felt thus covered is brought to the proper shape by working it on a wooden block, and is then dyed black. The hat is softened by steam, the crown is strengthened by placing in it a disc of scaleboard, and linen is pasted over this.

The nap is raised and a uniform direction given to its fibres by means of warm irons and hair brushes. The last processes are lining and binding, when the hat is ready to be worn. In the low-priced hats of the present day, commoner wool and fur, and smaller quantities of each, are used.

Silk hats consist of a cover or exterior part made of silk plush, which is laid upon a foundation of chip, stiffened linen, or some other light material, previously blocked into shape. The so-called velvet and satin hats deserve those titles only so far as the plush resemble those materials. The plush is mostly woven in the north of England. Paris hats are for the most part made in England, the silk plush being imported from France.

The various tools employed are mostly used for shaping the different parts of the hat. The _cutting machine_, for dividing and preparing the felt and other materials; the _block_, on which the body of the hat is formed previous to its being placed in the _lathe_, where it is made perfectly round; the _brow-piece_, for shaping the hat where it fits the head; the _card_, a sort of wire brush for scratching up or carding the fibre of the silk or beaver after the hat is made; the _rounding cards_, for pressing and completing the hat near the brim; the _curler_, for turning up and shaping the brim; the _multer_, _finishing iron_, and _blistering iron_, are used for shaping and smoothing; the _polishing block_ holds the hat while it receives the final process of brushing and smoothing with a pad of velvet called the _veleure_.

THE MILLER.

There is scarcely a boy to be found who, when he has been into the country and seen the wheel of the old water mill going round, or the fans of the windmill slowly revolving in the air, has not thought that it would be pleasant to follow the business of a Miller.

Millers are proverbially jolly fellows, and their houses and the mills themselves are generally very picturesque, and stand in pleasant country places; then, again, what wonderful fat perch and chub and pike can be caught in the weir or the mill stream, and what a quiet sleepy occupation it must be to lie on the grass or in some great room in the mill, watching the fans, or listening to the summer breeze wafting through the sails!

If anybody should think, however, that the Miller’s life is a lazy one he had better alter his opinion; for, unless he wishes to starve amidst plenty, the Miller must be up betimes, and, besides working himself, keeping a good look-out amongst his men, lest both he and his customers should suffer by their negligence.

The mortar would seem to be the earliest machine used for the purpose of bruising or reducing grain to a powder, or into a state fit for the making of bread. By means of the handle the pestle would with tolerable facility be driven round the mortar, and the grain reduced to a powder, as is done with certain drugs by the pestle of the apothecary of the present day.

In process of time, shafts were added to these machines; and in the opinion of Beckmann, the oldest cattle mills resembled those described in Sonnerat’s Voyage to the East Indies, in which the pestle of a mortar, fastened to a stake driven into the earth, is affixed to a shaft, to which two oxen are yoked. These oxen are driven by a man, while another is employed in dropping the grain into the mortar and placing it under the pestle.

We have good reason for knowing that the Romans, for a long time, used no other instrument than the pestle and mortar.

Pounding continued in use among the Romans so late as after the era of Vespasian. This fact clearly proves that the Romans were many ages behind the Eastern world in the arts of civilization, for grinding of corn into flour was practised, we know, in the times of the patriarchs, and was probably the invention of the antediluvian world.

The subject-Britons universally adopted the Roman name, but applied it, as we their successors apply it at present, only to the Roman mill; still distinguishing their own original mill as we distinguish it, by its own original denomination of a quern. A Roman or water mill was probably erected at every stationary town in the kingdom, and it is quite certain that one was erected at Mancunium (Manchester), serving equally the purposes of the town and the uses of the garrison. One alone would be sufficient, as the use of hand-mills was at that time very common in both, many such having been found about the site of the station particularly, and the use of them generally having being retained among us very nearly to the present period. Such mills it would be particularly necessary to have in the station, that the garrison might be prudently provided against a siege.

The ancient Asiatic hand-mill consists of two flat round stones, about twenty inches or two feet in diameter, kept rolling one on the other by means of a stick, which does the office of a handle. The corn falls down on the undermost stone, through a hole in the middle of the uppermost, which by its circular motion spreads it on the undermost, where it is bruised and reduced to flour; this flour, working out at the rim of the millstones, lights on a board set on purpose to receive it. The bread made of it is said to be better tasted than that made by either wind or water mills: these hand-mills cost only a few shillings of English money.

This description of mill is frequently alluded to in the Scriptures, and it was the practice for the women to grind corn every morning by means of hand-mills; and in the East, or at least in many parts of it, it continues to be the practice to this day.

Water wheels, as far as the figure and construction are concerned, may be reduced to three kinds, and they are usually known by the names—overshot wheel, balance wheel, breast wheel, and undershot wheel.

In an overshot wheel, the water is conducted over the top of the wheel, and acts first by its momentum or mere movement, or motion, and then by its weight—the weight being its principal power in impelling the wheel round, the mere movement or motion of the water producing in this case little effect. The water is received into buckets placed all around the circle of the wheel. It first strikes the wheel at the top, and filling the first bucket, by its momentum or moving power, and more particularly by its weight, it sets the wheel in motion, and consequently makes that side heavier; and as fresh buckets rise to receive the water, while those below have emptied themselves, a constant tendency to motion is created, and rotation is produced.

In a balance wheel, the water strikes the wheel not at the top, but always more or less above its centre, or axle. This wheel differs in no respect from the overshot wheel in its construction. It is employed where there is not a sufficient fall for an overshot wheel, which requires less water in consequence of its commanding a much greater leverage.

In an undershot wheel the water acts only by its momentum, or moving power. The circumference of the wheel, instead of being supplied with buckets, as in the overshot, and breast or balance wheels, is furnished with floats, or float boards, as they are called, and, being exposed to the action of a running stream, generally, if not always, increased in rapidity by making an artificial fall, is thus driven round, and in flour-mills its force is communicated by cog-wheels to the stones employed in reducing corn to meal.

In a breast wheel, the water has no previous fall, and therefore does not strike the floats at the bottom of the wheels, as in the undershot wheel, with an increased velocity. The breast wheel is therefore fixed in what is called a race, formed of stone or brick work, agreeing with the curvature of the wheel, and being thus let on from its own level, acts both by its weight and momentum, or movement. This wheel is unlike the undershot wheel, being close boarded round its circumference, like an overshot or balance wheel, the undershot wheel being always open; in short, it is a sort of bucket wheel; the buckets, however, being constructed differently from those of the overshot and balance wheels.

A tide-mill, as the name imports, is worked by the ebbing and flowing of the tide. Of these mills there are various kinds; first, those in which the water wheel turns one way when the tide is rising, and the other when it is falling; secondly, those in which the wheel turns the same way whether it is rising or falling; thirdly, those in which the wheel itself rises or falls as the tide flows or ebbs; and fourthly, those in which the axle of the water wheel is so fixed, that it shall neither rise nor fall; the rotary motion being still given to the wheel, whether it be partially or wholly immersed in the water.

All the machines for grinding corn and seeds are mills, whatever may be their particular application. One very common form is that of an iron machine, supported on four legs, having a winch handle on one side, a fly wheel on another, a hopper at the top, and a crushing apparatus in the centre. The grain or seed is put into the hopper, the winch handle is turned, the grain becomes crushed to powder, and falls out at the bottom of the apparatus. Sometimes the mill is made chiefly of wood, but with iron wheel and crushing apparatus. One kind of wheat mill, in addition to the usual mill apparatus, has a chest which acts as a flour-dressing machine. Some mills are adapted for crushing beans rather than seeds.

The crushing apparatus in mills is of two kinds, either one stone working round in contact with another, or two metallic surfaces, between which the substance is forced, but between which it cannot pass except in a fine state.

The _millstones_ employed in grinding corn require to be made of a peculiar kind of stone. The greater proportion of our millstones are procured from a particular spot in Western Germany. At about ten miles from Coblentz is a small town called Andernach, the chief trade of which is in millstones, procured from the neighbouring quarries of Nieder Mendig. There are several quarries, averaging about fifty feet in depth, each quarry shaped like an inverted cone, down the sides of which the quarrymen descend by a spiral path. The quarrymen have to cut away through a superincumbent layer of soft porous stone, till they come to a layer of hard, blackish, heavy stone, regularly porous, and yielding sparks when struck with iron. This is the millstone, and requires good and well-prepared tools to work it; it is supposed to be a compact lava from some extinct volcano; and as there are fissures or gaps at intervals, these facilitate the separation of the stone into blocks suitable for millstones. All round the bottom of the conical cavities, the stone has been excavated in galleries or horizontal passages. The stones are brought to shape by means of hammers and chisels. A deep socket is cut through the middle of such stones as are intended for runners, or upper stones. The furrows on the surfaces of the stones are produced by means of a double-edged hammer, about 14 lbs. weight.

Windmills are of two kinds; in one the wind is made to act upon vanes or sails, generally four, which are disposed so as to revolve by that action in a plane which is nearly vertical; and in the other, the axis of revolution being precisely vertical, any point on the surface of a vane revolves in a horizontal plane. The former is called a _vertical_ windmill, and the latter a _horizontal_ windmill.

The building for a vertical windmill is generally a wall of timber or brickwork, in the form of a frustrum of a cone, and terminated above by a wooden dome, which is capable of revolving horizontally upon it. A ring of wood, forming the lower part of the dome, rests upon a ring of the same material at the top of the wall, and the surfaces in contact being made very smooth, the dome may easily be turned round upon the wall; and is prevented from sliding off by a rim which projects from it, and descends over the interior circumference of the lower ring. The dome in turning carries with it the windsails and their axle; and thus the wind sails may be adjusted to agree with the direction of the wind, or the plane in which the radii of the sails turn may be made perpendicular to that direction. The revolution is sometimes accomplished by the force of a man applied to a winch near the ground, but in general the wind itself is made to turn the dome or the mill by means of a set of small vanes, which are situated at the extremity of a long horizontal arm projecting from the dome, in a plane passing through the vertical shaft of the mill, and on the side opposite to the great sails.

A horizontal windmill is a great cylindrical frame of timber, which is made to revolve about an upright centre, and its convex surface is formed of boards attached in vertical positions to the upper and lower parts of the frame. The whole is enclosed in a fixed cylinder having the same upright centre as the other; this consists of a _revolving screen_ or a number of boards, which are so disposed that in whatever direction the wind may blow, it may enter between them on one side only of a vertical plane, passing through the axis, and thus give motion to the interior cylinder. The effective power of the vertical windmill is, however, so much greater than that of the horizontal windmill, that the latter is now seldom constructed.

The _dressing machine_ consists of a hollow cylinder, or frame, covered with wire cloth of different degrees of fineness, the finest being at the elevated, or upper end of the cylinder, which is inclined in the same way as the bolting mill. Within the cylinder, which may be made of pieces of wood rendered circular, and, like the ribs of an animal, placed at certain distances from each other, a reel is placed with its axle in the centre of the cylinder, which is fixed, or stationary. To the rails of this reel are attached hair brushes, which, when made to revolve, or turn round, brush against the interior cloth wire surface of the cylinder. The machine is provided with a shoe or jigger, very similar to that of the millstones, to cause a regular supply of flour or meal in the same state in which it came from the millstones through a spout from the floor above, to which it is elevated by the sack tackle, or elevator, after being ground. The meal by this means being gradually let, or fed into the cylinder, is, by the motion of the brushes of the reel, sifted or rubbed through the cloth wire with which the cylinder is covered. The finest of the flour will go through the upper end, where the finest wire cloth is placed; the next finest through the next division of the wire cloth, which is coarser, the middlings through the following division, the pollard, or sharps, through the last, and the bran, not being able to get through the wire cloth at all, on account of its coarseness, is thrown out at the end of the cylinder. The cylinder is enclosed in a large and close box, to prevent the waste of flour by its going off in dust. This box is divided into several compartments, or partitions, by means of moveable boards. Some millers have more partitions than others, and indeed they all vary the number to suit the nature or sort of flour which they are manufacturing. In a dressing machine of three divisions, the flour deposited in the first is called household, or seconds, that in the second middlings, and in the third pollard, which is not flour, but a fine description of bran.

When wheat arrives at a mill to be ground the sacks are received in the lower part of the mill, and hoisted by means of the sack tackle to the upper storeys, generally the uppermost. The mode of this operation is as follows, and it is performed with little bodily labour. The rope or chain of the sack tackle is firmly fastened round the mouth of the sack by the man below, who by means of a rope attached to a lever throws the tackle into gear. The sack then immediately ascends, without any further aid from the man, through the different trap doors, till it has arrived at the place of its destination. There another man is ready to receive it, who, as soon as he has landed it by pulling it on one side, throws the tackle out of gear, and returns the rope or chain to the man below. The wheat is then shot into a garner or bin, and thus the same process goes on till the whole load or cargo is safely deposited in the bin or garner. The wheat remains there till it is wanted to be ground, when, by means of a spout, it is conveyed to the hoppers below, and from thence runs in between the stones. In its progress to the stones, it may, or may not, be subjected to a cleansing process. The wheat being reduced to a flour, escapes through an aperture of the floor into a spout, by which it is conveyed to the trough. It is then either put into sacks, and drawn up again into one of the higher storeys, and deposited in bins over the dressing machines, or this is effected by a machine called an _elevator_, which performs the operation without the assistance of manual labour. In this bin the flour should be left till, at any rate, it is perfectly cold, but is will be all the better if it remain for three or four weeks, provided it be occasionally turned. From this bin it is passed, by means of a spout, to the hopper of the bolting mill or dressing machine, by which it is separated from the bran or pollard, and is then fit for use.

The _screening machine_ consists of a roller-shaped sieve, so divided, that the corn which is placed at one end passes over a large surface of wire as the sieve revolves, and this operation removes from it external impurities, such as sand and dirt. When it arrives at the end of the screw the wheat falls into a hopper, by which it is conveyed by spouts into small hoppers, placed over one side of each pair of millstones. From these hoppers there are spouts placed in nearly a horizontal line, which spouts conduct the corn from the hoppers to the eye of the millstone. They are attached to the hopper, so as to admit of a horizontal motion, which is effected by a projecting part of the axle or spindle of the stone, called a _damsel_. It is shaped like a cross, so that, by the revolution of the millstone, it keeps tapping the end of the spout, and gives a rapid vibratory motion to it, which causes a regular supply of corn to enter the eye of the stone; by the action of the stones the corn is reduced to flour, which passes, by means of spouts, into the troughs on the ground floor.

The _troughs_ in which the flour is kept; the _scoop_ and _scales_ for weighing small quantities; the _claw_ for moving and the _steelyard_ for weighing sacks, are the other principal objects seen in a mill. _Jacob’s ladder_ is the name given to a revolving band fitted with a number of leathern cups. These revolve with the band through the flour and serve to carry it up a shaft from one floor to another.

THE BAKER.

Of all the trades that are carried on in large towns there is none more important than that of the Baker. In some parts of the country, where people make their own bread at home, or at all events have all the materials for making it, and know how to mix the different ingredients, it is of less consequence; but only imagine what would be our dismay in London, if we got up some morning and heard that all the bakers had agreed not to send in the rolls for breakfast, and that we must be satisfied to live upon puddings and vegetables until they set to work again to make bread.

And yet, in the early part of their history, several nations of which we read at school had no knowledge of the trade of a Baker. Until they discovered the art of making proper bread, and somebody showed them the use of an oven, the Romans made their meal into a sort of porridge, or knew no better than to mix it into flat cakes, which they cooked on hot stones or in the wood ashes of their fires. The Anglo-Saxons were a little better off, for they mixed leaven with their dough, to make the cakes lighter and better; but you will remember—by the story of King Alfred, who when he was in disguise and going to watch the Danish camp, was left in the neatherd’s hut to watch the cooking of the cakes—that they were baked in the embers of burnt wood upon the hearth.

In many parts of Europe they still use a sort of cake-bread or rolls instead of loaves; and in some parts of northern Germany and Russia the bread of the peasants is nearly black, and is so coarse and sour that few English people could eat it, especially as it is kept till it grows quite hard, and sometimes has to be cut with a saw.

The Eastern nations understood the use of ovens, however, and the Jews especially were very good Bakers, as were probably the Egyptians, for we read of Pharaoh’s Baker, whose dream Joseph interpreted. The trade of baking was held in very high esteem amongst the nations of antiquity, and included not only the making of bread, but of those cakes and sweetmeats of which all Oriental people, and some European people too, are so fond. By reading the history of the Jews and the Egyptians we learn that fermented or leavened bread was in common use amongst them, at a very early period of their history, so that the pulse-eating people, or the people of Europe who could only eat grain made into porridge, or simply cooked, were for a long time behind the Orientals in this respect. It was not till 600 years after the establishment of the Roman state that a public bakery was opened in Rome itself, and before this time, which was about 167 years before the birth of Christ, all the baking and bread making was done, amongst the rest of the family cooking, in the kitchens of private houses.

When the public bakeries were established, however, those who followed the trade were held in great respect, and a code of laws was made to regulate the manner in which their business should be conducted. The same importance was given to the trade in England, when Bakers first set up business in the large towns, and people began to buy their loaves instead of making them at home. The early statutes and laws place Bakers above mere handicraftsmen, and ranked them with gentlemen, and very severe punishments were inflicted on fraudulent Bakers, who neglected to mark their loaves so that “wheaten” bread might be distinguished from “household;” the same laws condemned that Baker to the pillory who gave short weight, even by so much as the fraction of an ounce, and the bakehouses were placed under the control of the magistrates.

There are many people who think that some such stringent laws might be usefully employed now, and there can be no doubt that the Baker has too many opportunities of adulterating his bread, or sending short weight: the first seriously injuring the health, and the second the pockets, of his customers. One of the worst features of the Baker’s trade in our time, however, is the dirty condition of the bakehouses and places where bread is made, the filthy habits which such places give rise to, and the very long hours during which journeymen Bakers are at work. All these matters have lately been made the subject of inquiry, and it may be hoped that they will be greatly improved.

The tools that are used in most bakeries are, beside the _oven_, where the bread is baked, and the _kneading trough_, in which the dough is mixed: a _seasoning tub_ for mixing other ingredients to be mingled with the dough, a _wire sieve_ for sifting the flour, and a _seasoning sieve_ made of tin pierced with small holes; a _flour basket_ lined with tin, and a _flour scoop_, a _pail_, a _bowl_, a _salt-bin_, which should be near the oven, a _yeast tub_, a _dough knife_, _scales_ and _weights_ for weighing the dough before it is moulded into a loaf, a _scraper_ for removing the dough from the trough and the board where the loaves are shaped, wooden and iron _peels_, a sort of shovels with long handles, for placing the bread in the oven or removing loaves, dishes and cakes, after they are baked, a _rasp_, like a coarse broad file with a bent handle, for rasping off any portion of burnt crust; a _dusting brush_ for sweeping away refuse of flour or dust from the boards where the loaves are made or placed after baking, an _egg whisk_ for beating eggs used in pastry, and an _egg brush_ for putting a glazing of egg on the outside of buns or cakes, differently shaped _tins_ or _moulds_ for rolls or other articles of fancy bakery, coarse squares of _baize_ or _flannel_ for covering the dough or the newly-made bread, and a _scuttle_, _swabber_, or _cleaning net_, made of a quantity of rough netting fastened on the end of a pole, and which, after being wetted, is used for the final removal of all dirt from the oven just before “setting the batch,” or placing the loaves for baking. Beside these there are in most bakehouses _set ups_, or oblong pieces of beech wood, to be placed in the oven for the purpose of keeping the loaves in their places.

It would be impossible to give instructions here how to make the various sorts of bread, but the ordinary kind sold by London Bakers is made much in the following way:—

Suppose that the Baker desires to make up a sack of flour; he empties it into the kneading trough, and then proceeds to sift it, in order to make it lie more lightly and to break up any lumps.

He then takes from eight to ten pounds of potatoes and boils them, without removing the skins, afterwards mashing them in the seasoning tub, with about half the quantity of flour, and adding a couple of pails of water. To this mixture he pours about two quarts of yeast, made from the liquor of boiled hops, malt, and patent yeast already made and sold for the purpose. This is the leaven, which makes the difference between bread and meal-cake, or the English loaf and the Australian “damper,” which is made only of flour and water, and baked at a bush fire; the yeast or leaven is, in fact, meal in its early state of decomposition.

This mixture then is left in the seasoning tub, covered with a sack for several hours, and allowed to ferment. Then the Baker separates about a quarter of the flour in the trough by means of a board, and piles it up at one end apart from the larger quantity, and it is upon this that he pours the contents of the seasoning tub, taking care that it passes through a sieve placed on a couple of sticks across the trough.

This portion upon which the liquor has been poured is called the _sponge_, and he proceeds to “set it” by thoroughly mixing, and finally giving it a dust of flour at the top, after which it is kept for five or six hours, or until it has twice “risen,” or puffed out by means of the fermenting liquor within it.

Just as it has risen a second time, and air bubbles are breaking through it to the surface, about three more pailfuls of water are poured upon it, and in this water about three pounds of salt have been dissolved; this is well mixed with the sponge, and then, the board being removed, the sponge and the rest of the flour is worked into one mass. It is this kneading and breaking up the sponge which is the hard labour of the Baker, and that it is hard labour may be known from the fact that he works nearly naked, and that, as he lifts and pummels the tenacious mass, he heaves great sighs and groans like those with which paviors ram down the stones in the roads. In many of the best bakehouses now a machine is used, which supersedes this manual labour; the mass of dough being placed in a cylinder, within which an axle fitted with bent blades, or arms of iron, revolves, passing through and through the dough as it moves from end to end.

By another system (that of Dr. Dauglish) the use of yeast is dispensed with, and the bread, made by machinery, is leavened by carbonic acid gas, which is forced into the cylinder after the atmospheric air is pumped out, and so goes through the dough and produces the results of fermentation.

The dough having been thoroughly mixed in the trough, is left for an hour or two to “prove,” and then, after being sprinkled with flour to prevent its sticking, is thrown out upon a board, or the lid of the next trough, and cut into pieces which are weighed, and afterwards moulded into loaves. The moulding is only learnt by practice. The piece of dough is cut in half and shaped according to the kind of loaf required, one piece forming the top of the loaf, being laid in a hollow of that which is to be the bottom, and the joint made by a skilful turn of the knuckles. The loaves are placed in the oven by means of the peel, and are packed at the back and sides as closely as possible, the cottage bread only being separate, that it may be crusted all round. The batch takes about two hours to bake. Biscuits are now mostly made by machinery, which in large establishments turns them out ready for the oven; but when they are wholly or partially made by hand, the dough is prepared and afterwards moulded into shapes, and each shape pricked with the _docker_, before being placed in the oven.

THE SUGAR REFINER.

Although sugar was known from very early times, it was used only in medicine, and was supposed to be a sort of honey found upon canes in India and Arabia. It is frequently mentioned by the very early writers. The culture of the canes seems to have been confined to the islands of the Indian Archipelago, and the kingdoms of Bengal, Siam, &c. The traffic in sugar was so lucrative that the Indians concealed the mode of preparing it, stating to the merchants of Ormus, who imported it with gums and spices, that it was extracted from a reed, whereupon many unsuccessful attempts were made to find it in the reed-like plants of Arabia. In 1250 the great discoverer, Marco Polo, visited the country of the sugar cane, and the merchants afterwards sent to the place of its growth, instead of buying it at Ormus. For a long period the use of sugar in England was confined to medicines, or to preparing choice dishes at feasts; and this continued till 1580, when it was brought from Brazil to Portugal, and thence to our country.

Cultivators distinguish three great varieties of canes—the Creole, the Batavian, and the Otaheite. The Creole cane is indigenous to India, and was transplanted thence to Sicily, the Canary Isles, the Antilles, South America, and to the West Indies. It has dark green leaves, and a thin but very knotty stem. The Batavian or striped cane, which has a dense foliage, and is covered with purpled stripes, is a native of Java, where it is chiefly cultivated for the manufacture of rum; it is also met with in some parts of the New World and the West Indies. The Otaheite variety grows most luxuriantly, is the most juicy, and yields the largest product. It is cultivated chiefly in the West Indies and South America; it ripens in ten months, and is hardier than the other varieties.

The sugar cane, being originally a bog-plant requires a moist, nutritive soil, and a hot tropical or sub-tropical climate. It is propagated by slips or pieces of the stem, with buds on them, and about two feet long. It arrives at maturity in twelve or sixteen months, according to the temperature; the leaves fall off towards the following season, and the stem acquires a straw-yellow colour. The cane is cut by some planters before the flowering season, but it is more usual to cut it some weeks after. The plantations are so arranged that the various divisions of the fields may ripen in succession. The land should be supplied with manure rich in nitrogen, but not containing much saline matter. After the harvest the roots strike again, and produce a fresh crop of canes; but in about six years they require to be removed.

The time for cutting the canes varies with the soil and season, and the different varieties of cane. In a state of maturity the canes are from six feet to fifteen feet in length, and from one and a half inch to two inches in diameter. The usual signs of maturity are a dry, smooth, brittle skin, a heavy cane, a grey pith, and sweet and glutinous juice. Canes should be cut in dry weather, or the juice will be found diluted with an excess of water. When cut they are tied up in bundles, and conveyed to the crushing mill, particular attention being paid that the supply should not exceed the demand, otherwise the cut canes would ferment and spoil.

The sugar cane grows from pieces or slips of itself, containing germs, and these develop rootlets at the joints, which draw sustenance to the young shoot as it increases. In the course of time the buds in the radicle, or root-joints of the first cane, throw out roots, and form a radicle for a second stem; and in this way, under favourable circumstances, several canes are produced from the parent stock for a period of about six years, and sometimes for several more. They, however, diminish every year in length of joint and circumference, and are inferior in appearance to the original plant; but they yield richer juice, and produce finer sugar.

The sugar exists in the cells of the cane in a state of solution, and is extracted therefrom by pressure. With this, as with other branches of industry, science has of late years stepped in, and has greatly facilitated the process of extraction and manufacture. It may be as well to give here a summary of the processes employed in the preparation of raw sugar: The canes are passed through the mill, and the juice thus extracted from them runs from the mill into a tank, whence it is pumped to cisterns for supplying the _clarifiers_, heated by steam, where it is purified. From thence it is run into _bag filters_, by which the mechanical impurities are removed. It is then run into _charcoal filters_ to remove the colouring matter of the juice. The filtered juice is then run off into tanks and is drawn thence by vacuum into the _vacuum pan_, where it is granulated, and from whence it is finally discharged for packing. When the steam clarifiers are not employed the cane juice is run into a series of pans or _teaches_ over open fires. This apparatus is also known as a “battery,” and forms another method of purification.

The original crushing apparatus of India was a kind of squeezing mortar, made out of the hollow trunk of a tamarind tree, and worked by a yoke of oxen, the pestle or stamper being a strong beam eighteen feet long, and rounded at the bottom so as to squeeze or crush the canes in the mortar. Mills similar to those used for crushing oil seeds were used—as were also several other forms of apparatus—before rollers were introduced. Stone and iron rollers were first used, with the axes in a vertical position, but the horizontal was soon found to be the more convenient and economical. The importance of a systematic mechanical arrangement appears to have awakened attention during the reign of Charles the Second, for in 1663, Lord Willoughby and Lawrence Hyde (second son of Edward, Earl of Clarendon, High Chancellor of England) associated themselves with one David de Marcato, an inventor, and obtained a patent for twenty-one years for making and framing sugar mills. In 1691, John Tizack patented an engine for milling sugar canes, &c.; but in this, as in the previous case, it is not specified how the mill should be made. Later on in 1721, William Harding, a smith, of London, who had been many years in Jamaica, and was skilled in the manufacture of sugar mills, having observed their imperfections, how that they were chiefly made with large wooden cogs cased with iron, endeavoured while abroad to improve their construction, but failed for want of competent workmen. On his return to London he made models of sugar mills which were approved by the Royal Society. These mills were fitted with cast iron rollers and cog wheel gearing, and were worked by water power; from description they appear to be the type of mills of the present day. Some forty-five years later, Yonge and Barclay, ironfounders, of Allhallowslane, City, applied friction wheels to sugar mills. In 1773, John Fleming, a mill carpenter, proposed an arrangement of windmill sails which turned a vertical timber shaft shod with iron, and which gave motion to two hard wooden rollers, between which the cane was guided and squeezed. In 1807, H. C. Newman, of St. Christopher, West Indies, designed a mill to be worked by horse power. He used cog and crown wheels to give motion to three upright rollers, and the arrangement was considered one which greatly augmented the power and execution of this class of machinery. In 1821, John Collinge, of Lambeth, improved cast iron sugar mills by casting the rollers on wrought iron shafts, instead of keying them on, as previously done. In 1840, James Robinson patented improvements in sugar mills, which consisted in using four rollers, one large one and three smaller ones beneath, placed horizontally, and gearing by cogs into each other. Up to that time three rollers only appear to have been used. He also proposed to use six rollers, which are fed from an endless band passing over the rollers. He cast the rollers and shafts in one piece, cored out to admit steam to facilitate the extraction of the juice from the cane during crushing. He also proposed to tin the interior of vacuum pans, &c. Various other arrangements have been patented, but it is unnecessary here to enumerate, much less to describe, them. The foregoing examples give an idea of the progress of the subject during nearly two hundred years. The last ten years have seen rapid strides made in improving the make of mills, and the general arrangement of sugar works.

Cane juice, as expressed by the mill, is an opaque, slightly viscid fluid, of a dull grey, olive, or olive green colour, and of a sweet balmy taste. The juice is so exceedingly fermentable that, in the climate of the West Indies, it would often run into the acetous fermentation in twenty minutes after leaving the mill, if the process of clarifying were not immediately commenced.

The processes followed in the West Indies for separating the sugar from the juice are as follows: The juice is conducted by channels from the mill to large flat-bottomed _clarifiers_, which contain from three hundred to a thousand gallons each. When the clarifier is filled with juice, a little slaked lime is added to it; and when the liquor in the clarifier becomes hot by a fire underneath, the solid portions of the cane juice coagulate, and are thrown up in the form of scum. The clarified juice, which is bright, clear, and of a yellow wine colour, is transferred to the largest of a series of evaporating coppers or pans, three or more in number, in which it is reduced in bulk by boiling; it is transferred from one pan to another, and heated until the sugar is brought to the state of a soft mass of crystals imbedded in molasses—a thick, viscid, and uncrystallizable fluid. The soft concrete sugar is removed from the coolers into a range of casks, in which the molasses gradually drains from the crystalline portion, percolating through spongy plantain stalks placed in a hole at the bottom of each cask, which act as so many drains to convey the liquid to a large cistern beneath. With sugar of average quality, three or four weeks is sufficient for this purpose. The liquid portion constitutes molasses, which is employed to make rum. The crystallized portion is packed in hogsheads for shipment as raw, brown, or muscovado sugar; and in this state it is commonly exported from our West Indian colonies.

The refining of sugar is mainly a bleaching process, conducted on a large scale in England. There are two varieties produced by this bleaching, viz. clayed and loaf sugar. For clayed sugar, the sugar is removed from the coolers into conical earthen moulds called formes, each of which has a small hole at the apex. These holes being stopped up, the forms are placed apex downwards in other earthen vessels. The syrup, after being stirred round, is left for from fifteen to twenty hours to crystallize. The plugs are then withdrawn, to let out the uncrystallized syrup; and the base of the crystallized loaf being removed, the forme is filled up with pulverized white sugar.

This is well pressed down, and then a quantity of clay mixed with water is placed upon the sugar, the formes being put into fresh empty pots.

The moisture from the clay, filtering through the sugar, carries with it a portion of the colouring matter, which is more soluble than the crystals themselves. By a repetition of this process, the sugar attains nearly a white colour, and is then dried and crushed for sale.

But loaf sugar is the kind most usually produced by the refining processes. The brown sugar is dissolved with hot water, and then filtered through canvas bags, from which it exudes as a clear, transparent, though reddish syrup. The removal of this red tinge is effected by filtering the syrup through a mass of powdered charcoal, and we have then a perfectly transparent colourless liquid.

In the evaporation or concentration of the clarified syrup, which forms the next part of the refining process, the boiling is effected (under the admirable system introduced by Mr. Howard) in a vacuum, at a temperature of about 140° Fahrenheit. The sugar pan is a large copper vessel, with arrangements for extracting the air, admitting the syrup, admitting steam pipes, and draining off the sugar when concentrated. In using the pan a quantity of syrup is admitted, and an air pump is set to work to extract all the air from the pan, in order that the contents may boil at a low temperature. The evaporation proceeds, and when completed the evaporated syrup flows out of the pan through a pipe into an open vessel beneath, called the _granulating vessel_, around which steam circulates, and within which the syrup is brought to a partially crystallized state. From the granulators the syrup or sugar is transferred into moulds of a conical form, which were formerly made of coarse pottery, but are now usually of iron. In these moulds the sugar whitens and crystallizes, the remaining uncrystallized syrup flowing out at an opening at the bottom of the moulds. This syrup is reboiled with raw sugar, so as to yield an inferior quality of sugar; and, when all the crystallizable matter has been extracted from it, the remainder is sold as treacle. The loaves of sugar, after a few finishing processes, are ready for sale.

THE DYER AND SCOURER.