London: Simpkin, Marshall and company, ltd., 1899. — 368 p.A few words may be appropriate regarding the influences which have prompted, and the principles which have guided, the production of this work.
We had long been impressed by the scantiness of the bibliography of corn milling ; and had felt it strange that in this literary age-while, on the one hand, there should be extant various valuable milling works of a technical character, and an excellent milling press-yet that, on the other hand, there should be available no published history, however crude, of the origin and progress of this ancient and important industry.
This strange circumstance is due to no lack of interest. Corn milling possesses a distinctive historical interest over every other manufacturing art known. Without doubt it is the oldest continuously conducted industry of the world. The earliest efforts of primeval man, in the peaceful arts, were directed to pounding, from such grain, nuts and berries as he possessed, a rude kind of meal; while, centuries later, if the irrigation waterdriven wheel were one of the first power machines devised by human ingenuity, the water corn mill was its immediate successor. Whether by hand or by power, therefore, corn milling may claim to rank among the first fruits of man's inventive ingenuity.
