A History of Inventions, Discoveries, and Origins. Johann Beckmann

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СКАЧАТЬ meal442. In latter times the arts of grinding and of baking have declined very much in Italy; and sensible Italians readily acknowledge that their bread is much inferior to that of most parts of Europe, and that in this respect the Germans are their masters443. Rome indeed forms an exception; for one can procure there as good bread as in Germany; but it is necessary to acquaint the reader, that it is not baked by Italians but by Germans; and all the bread and biscuit baked at Venice in the public ovens, either for home consumption, the use of shipping, or for exportation, is the work of German masters and journeymen. They are called to Venice expressly for that purpose; and at Rome they form at present a company, and have a very elegant church. The ovens of these German bakers are seldom suffered to cool, and the greater part of the owners of them become rich; but as through avarice they often continue their labour, without interruption, in the greatest heat for several days and nights, scarcely one in ten of them lives to return with his wealth to Germany. The Germans have, it is certain, long supplied the inhabitants of proud Rome, the metropolis of Catholic Christendom, with bread; for in the fifteenth century it was customary in all the great families to use no other than German bread, as is very circumstantially related by Felix Fabri, a Dominican monk, who wrote about the end of the above century, and died in 1502444.

The mouture économique has been long known in Germany. Sebastian Muller, in the beginning of the seventeenth century, gave so clear a description of it, that the French even acknowledge it445. This author says that one Butré, who came to Germany to teach the Germans to grind and to bake, was not a little disconcerted when he found his scholars more expert than their officious master, and that he met with nothing to console him but that, according to his opinion, the mill-stones at Carlsruhe were too small, and that the bolting-sieves were not made in the same manner as those at Paris446.

Millers and bakers, even in France, practised sometimes this method of grinding so early as the sixteenth century; but it was some time forbidden by the police as hurtful. In the year 1546, those were threatened with punishment who should grind their corn twice447; and in 1658 this threat was renewed, and the cause added, that such a practice was prejudicial to the health448. Such prohibitions however, made by the police without sufficient grounds, could not prevent intelligent persons from remarking that the bran still contained meal, which, when separated from it, would be as proper for food as the first. Those who had observed this were induced, by the probability of advantage, to try to separate the remaining meal from the bran; and the attempt was attended with success, but it was necessary to keep it concealed. Malouin relates, that above a hundred years before, a miller at Senlis employed this method, and that the same practice was generally, though privately, introduced at all the mills in the neighbourhood. There were people who made a trade of purchasing bran in order to separate it from the meal, which they sold; and it is probable that many of them carried the art too far, and even ground bran along with the meal. This was done chiefly during times of scarcity, as in the year 1709. As men at that time were attentive to every advantage, this art was more known and more used, so that at length it became common. The clergy of the royal chapel and parish church at Versailles sent their wheat to be ground at an adjacent mill; it was, according to custom, put through the mill only once, and the bran, which still contained a considerable quantity of meal, was sold for fattening cattle. In time, the miller, having learned the mouture économique, purchased the bran from these ecclesiastics, and found that it yielded him as good flour as they procured from the whole wheat. The miller at length discovered to them the secret, and gave them afterwards fourteen bushels of flour from their wheat, instead of eight which he had given them before. This voluntary discovery of the miller was made in 1760, and it is probable that the art was disclosed by more at the same time. A baker named Malisset proposed to the lieutenant-général de police to teach a method, by which people could grind their corn with more advantage; and experiments were set on foot and published, which proved the possibility of it. A mealman of Senlis, named Buquet, who had the inspection of the mill belonging to the large hospital at Paris, made the same proposal; the result of his experiments, conducted under the direction of magistrates, was printed; the investigation of this art was now taken up by men of learning, who gave it a suitable name; and they explained it, made calculations on it, and recommended it so much, that the mouture économique engaged the attention of all the magistrates throughout France449. Government sent Buquet to Lyons in 1764, to Bordeaux in 1766, to Dijon in 1767, and to Montdidier in 1768; and the benefit which France at present derives from this improvement is well worth that trouble. Before that period, a Paris sétier yielded from eighty to ninety pounds of meal, and from one hundred and fifty to one hundred and sixty pounds of bran; but the same quantity yields now one hundred and eighty-five, and according to the latest improvements one hundred and ninety-five pounds of meal. In the time of St. Louis, from four to five sétiers were reckoned necessary for the yearly maintenance of a man, and these even were scarcely sufficient; as many were allowed to the patients in the hospital aux Quinze-Vingts; and such was the calculation made by Budée in the sixteenth century450. When the miller’s art was everywhere improved, these four sétiers were reduced to three and a half, and after the latest improvements to two.

Mills by which grain is only freed from the husk and rounded, are called barley-mills, and belong to the new inventions. At first barley was prepared only by pounding, but afterwards by grinding; and as it was more perfectly rounded by the latter method, it was distinguished from that made by pounding by the name of pearl-barley. Barley-mills differ very little in their construction from meal-mills; and machinery for striking barley is generally added to the latter. The principal difference is that the mill-stone is rough-hewn around its circumference; and, instead of an under-stone, has below it a wooden case, within which it revolves, and which, in the inside, is lined with a plate of iron pierced like a grater, with holes, the sharp edges of which turn upwards. The barley is thrown upon the stone, which, as it runs round, draws it in, frees it from the husk, and rounds it; after which it is put into sieves and sifted. At Ulm, however, the well-known Ulm barley is struck by a common mill, after the stones have been separated a sufficient distance from each other. The first kind of barley-mills is a German invention. In Holland the first was erected at Saardam not earlier than the year 1660. This mill, which at first was called the Pellikaan, scarcely produced in several years profit sufficient to maintain a family; but in the beginning of the last century there were at Saardam fifty barley-mills, which brought considerable gain to their proprietors451.

As long as the natural freedom of man continued unrestrained by a multiplicity of laws, every person was at liberty to build on his own lands and possessions whatever he thought proper, and not only water- but also wind-mills. This freedom was not abridged even by the Roman law452. But as it is the duty of rulers to consult what is best for the whole society under their protection, princes took care that no one should make such use of common streams as might impede or destroy their public utility453. On this account no individual was permitted to construct a bridge over any stream; and it is highly probable that the proprietors of land, when water-mills began to be numerous, restrained, from the same principle, the liberty of erecting them, and allowed them only, when after a proper investigation they were declared to be not detrimental. Water-mills, therefore, were included among what were called regalia; and among these they are expressly reckoned by the emperor Frederic I.454 On small streams however which were not navigable, the proprietors of the banks might build mills everywhere along themСКАЧАТЬ