FOOTNOTE:

[1] Almost everywhere limestone is the underlying rock, but siliceous

sands, brought out by the Atlantic rivers to the N.E., are carried

the whole length of the Florida coast by marine action.

FLORIDABLANCA, DON JOSE MONINO Y REDONDO, COUNT OF (1728-1808), Spanish

statesman, was born at Murcia in 1728. He was the son of a retired army

officer, and received a good education, which he completed at the

university of Salamanca, especially applying himself to the study of

law. For a time he followed the profession of an advocate, and acquired

a high reputation. A more public career was opened to him by the marquis

of Esquilache, then chief minister of state, who sent him ambassador to

Pope Clement XIV. Successful in his mission, he was soon after appointed

by Charles III. successor to his patron, and his administration was one

of the most brilliant Spain had ever seen. He regulated the police of

Madrid, reformed many abuses, projected canals, established many

societies of agriculture and economy and many philanthropical

institutions, and gave encouragement to learning, science and the fine

arts. Commerce flourished anew under his rule, and the long-standing

disputes with Portugal about the South American colonies were settled.

He sought to strengthen the alliance of Spain with Portugal by a double

marriage between the members of the royal houses, designing by this

arrangement to place ultimately a Spanish prince on the throne of

Portugal. But in this he failed. Floridablanca was the right-hand man of

King Charles III. in his policy of domestic reform, and was much under

the influence of French _philosophes_ and economic writers. Like other

reformers of that school he was a strong supporter of the royal

authority and a convinced partisan of benevolent despotism. The French

Revolution frightened him into reaction, and he advocated the support of

the first coalition against France. He retained his office for three

years under Charles IV.; but in 1792, through the influence of the

favourite Godoy, he was dismissed and imprisoned in the castle of

Pampeluna. Here he was saved from starvation only by the intervention of

his brother. He was afterwards allowed to retire to his estates, and

remained in seclusion till the French invasion of 1808. He was then

called by his countrymen to take the presidency of the central junta.

But his strength failed him, and he died at Seville on the 20th of

November of the same year. He left several short treatises on

jurisprudence.

See _Obras originales del Conde de Floridablanca_, edited, with

biographical introduction, by A. Ferrer del Rio; in the _Biblioteca de

Rivadeneyra_, vol. lix.

FLORIDOR [JOSIAS DE SOULAS, Sieur de Prinefosse] (d. c. 1671), French

actor, was born in Brie early in the 17th century, the son of a

gentleman of German family who had moved to France, married there, and

become a Roman Catholic. The son entered the French army, but after

being promoted ensign, quitted the army for the theatre, where he took

the name of Floridor. His first Paris appearance was in 1640. Three

years later he was called to the company at the Hotel de Bourgogne,

where he played all the leading parts in tragedy and comedy and became

the head of his profession. He was a man of superb physique and

excellent carriage, with a flexible and sonorous voice, and manners of

rare distinction and elegance. He was much liked at court, and Louis

XIV. held him in particular esteem. He died in 1671 or 1672.

FLORIN, the name applied to several coins of the continent of Europe and

to two coins struck in England at different times. The word comes

through the Fr. _florin_ from the Ital. _fiorino_, flower, Lat. _flos_,

_florem_. Fiorino was the Italian name of a gold coin issued at Florence

in 1252, weighing about fifty-four grains. This coin bore on the obverse

a lily, from which it took its name of "the flower," on the reverse the

Latin name of the city _Florentia_, from which it was also known as a

"florence." "Florin" and "florence" seem to have been used in English

indiscriminately as the name of this coin. The Florentine florin was

held in great commercial repute throughout Europe, and similar coins

were struck in Germany, other parts of Italy, France, &c. The English

gold florin was introduced by Edward III. in 1343, half and quarter

florins being struck at the same time. This gold florin weighed 108

grains and was to be current for six shillings. It was found, however,

to be overvalued in proportion to the silver currency and was

demonetized the following year. The florin did not again appear in the

English coinage until 1849, when silver coins with this name, having a

nominal value of two shillings (one-tenth of a pound), were struck. When

first issued the "Dei gratia" was omitted from the inscription, and they

were frequently referred to as the "Godless" or "graceless" florins. The

D.G. was added in 1852. In 1887 a double florin or four shilling piece

was issued, but its coinage was discontinued in 1890. The total value of

double florins issued during these years amounted to L533,125. (See also

NUMISMATICS.)

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.

The products of the break-rolls are treated by what are known as

scalpers, which are simply machines for sorting out these products for

further treatment. Scalpers may either be revolving reels or flat

sieves. The sieve is the favourite form of scalper on account of its

gentle action. Scalping requires a separating and sifting, not a

scouring action. The break products are usually separated on a sieve

covered with wire or perforated zinc plates. Generally speaking, two

sieves are in one frame and are run at a slight incline. The throughs

of the top sieve fall on the sieve below, while the rejections or

overtails of the first sieve are fed to the next break. The

"throughs," or what has passed this sieve, are graded by the next

sieve, the tailings going to a purifier, while the throughs may be

freed from what flour adheres to them by a centrifugal dressing

machine and then treated by another purifier. A form of scalper which

has come into general use on the continent of Europe, and to a lesser

extent in Great Britain and America, is known as the plansifter. This

machine, of Hungarian origin, is simply a collection of superimposed

flat sieves in one box, and will scalp or sort out any kind of break

stock very efficiently. A system of grading the tailings, that is, the

rejections of the scalpers, introduced by James Harrison Carter

(Carter-Zimmer patent), was known as pneumatic sorting. Its object was

to supplement the work of the scalpers by classifying the tailings by

means of air-currents. To this end each scalper was followed by a

machine arranged somewhat like a gravity purifier; that is to say, a

current of air drawn through the casing of the sorter allowed the

heaviest and best material to drop down straight, while the lighter

stuff was deposited in one or other of further compartments formed by

obliquely placed adjustable cant boards. So searching was this

grading, that from the first sorter of a four-break plant four

separations would be obtained, the first going to the second break,

the second joining the first separation from the second sorter and

being fed to the third break, while the third went with the best

separation of the third sorter to the fourth break, and the last

separation from all the sorters went straight into the bran sack. The

work of the break-rolls was greatly simplified and reduced by this

sorting process, as each particle of broken wheat went exactly to that

pair of break-rollers for which it was suitable, instead of all the

material being run indiscriminately through all the break-rollers and

thereby being cut up with the necessary result of increasing the

production of small bran.

Purifiers.

The object of the purifier, a machine on which milling engineers have

lavished much thought and labour, is to get away from the semolina and

middlings as much impure matter as possible, that those products may

be pure, as millers say, for reduction to flour by the smooth rolls.

The purifiers used in British mills take advantage of the fact that

the more valuable portions of the wheat berry are heavier than the

less valuable particles, such as bran and fibrous bodies, and a

current of air is employed to weigh these fragments of the wheat berry

as in a balance and to separate them while they pass over a

silk-covered sieve. To this end the semolina or middlings are fed on a

sieve vibrated by an eccentric and set at a slight downward angle.

This sieve is installed in an air-tight longitudinal wooden chamber

with glass windows on either side, through which the process of

purifying can be watched. Upwards through this sieve a fan constantly

draws a current of air, which, raising the stock upwards, allows the

heavier and better material to remain below while the lighter

particles are lifted off and fall on side platforms or channels,

whence they are carried forward and delivered separately. The good

material drops through the meshes of the silk, and is collected by a

worm. It is usual to clothe the sieve in sections with several

different meshes of silk so that stock of almost identical value, but

differing size, may be treated with uniform accuracy. In good

purifiers the strength of the current can be regulated at will in each

section. The tailings of a purifier do not usually exceed 10 to 15% of

the feed. The clothing of purifier sheets must be nicely graduated to

the clothing of the preceding machines. Repurification and even

tertiary purification may be necessary under certain conditions. In

Hungary and other parts of Europe, gravity purifiers are much in use.

Here the material is guided along an open sieve set at a slight angle,

while an air-current is drawn up at an acute angle. Under the sieve

may be arranged a series of inclined boards, the position of which can

be varied as required. The heaviest and most valuable products resist

the current and drop straight down, while lighter material is carried

off to further divisions.

Smooth rolls.

From the purifier all the stock except the tailings, which may require

other treatment, should go to the smooth rollers to be made into

flour, but here the rollerman will have to exercise great care and

discretion. Many of the remarks already made in regard to break-rolls

apply to smooth rolls, notably in respect of parallelism. But instead

of a cutting action, the smooth rolls press the material fed to them

into flour. This pressure, however, must be applied with great

discrimination, large semolina with impurities attached requiring

quite different treatment from that called for by small pure

middlings. The pressure on the stock must be just sufficient and no

more. Reduction rolls are usually run at a differential speed of about

2 to 3. The feed must be carefully graded, because to pass stock of

varying size through a pair of smooth rolls would be fatal to good

work. Scratch rolls very finely grooved are used for cracking impure

semolina or for reducing the tailings of purifiers. The latter often

hold fragments of bran, which are best detached by rolls grooved about

36 to the inch and run at a differential of 3 to 1. The reduction

requires even more roll surface than the break system. To do

first-class work a mill should have at least 35 to 40 in. on the

breaks and 50 in. on the reduction for each sack of 280 lb. of flour

per hour. Many engineers consider 100 to 110 in. on the break, scratch

and smooth rolls not too much.

Dressing.

The dressing out of the flour from the stock reduced on smooth rolls

is generally effected by centrifugal machines, which consist of a

slowly revolving cylinder provided with an internal shaft on which are

keyed a number of iron beaters that run at a speed of about 200

revolutions a minute, and fling the feed against the silk clothing of

the cylinder. What goes through the silk is collected by a worm

conveyor at the bottom of the machine. Most centrifugals have

so-called "cut-off" sheets, with internal divisions in the tail end;

these are intended to separate some intermediate products, which,

having been freed from floury particles, are treated on some other

machine, such as a pair of rolls either direct or after a purifier.

The centrifugal is undoubtedly an efficient flour separator, but the

plansifters already mentioned are also good flour-dressers, especially

in dry climates. A plansifter mill will have no centrifugals, except

one or two at the tail end where the material gets more sticky and

requires more severe treatment.

The yield of flour obtained in a British roller mill averages 70 to

73% of the wheat berry. The residue, with the exception of a very

small proportion of waste, is offal, which is divided into various

grades and sold. Profitable markets for British-made bran have been

found in Scandinavia, and especially in Denmark. In millstone milling

the yield of flour probably averaged 75 to 80%, but a certain

proportion of this was little more than offal. The length of the flour

yield taken by British millers varies in different parts of the

kingdom, because demand varies. In one locality high-class patents may

be at a premium; in another the call is for a straight grade, i.e. a

flour containing as much of the farinaceous substance as can be won

from the wheat berry. In one district there is a sale for rich offals,

that is, offals with plenty of flour adhering; in another there may be

no demand for such offals. Hence, though the general principles of

roller milling as given above hold good all over the country, yet in

practice the work of each mill is varied more or less to suit the

peculiarities of the local trade.

Bleaching of flour.

Early in the 19th century a French chemist, J.J.E. Poutet, discovered

that nitrous acid and oxides of nitrogen act on some fluid and

semi-fluid vegetable oils, removing their yellow tinge and converting

a considerable portion of their substance into a white solid. The

importance of this discovery, when the physical constitution of wheat

is considered, is obvious, but it was years before any attempt was

made to bleach flour. The first attempts at bleaching seem to have

been made on the wheat itself rather than on the flour. In 1879 a

process was patented for bleaching grain by means of chlorine gas, and

about 1891 a suggestion was made for bleaching grain by means of

electrolysed sea-water. In 1895 a scheme was put forward for treating

grain with sulphurous acid, and about two years later it was proposed

to subject both grain and flour to the influence of electric currents.

In 1893 a patent was granted for the purification of flour by means of

fresh air or oxygen, and three years later another inventor proposed

to employ the Rontgen rays for the same purpose. In 1898 Emile Frichot

took out a patent for using ozone and ozonized air for

flour-bleaching. The patent (No. 1661 of 1901) taken out by J. & S.

Andrews of Belfast recited that flour is known to improve greatly if

kept for some time after grinding, and the purpose of the invention it

covered was to bring about this improvement or conditioning not only

immediately after grinding, but also to a greater extent than can be

effected by keeping. The process consisted in subjecting the flour to

the action of a suitable gaseous oxidizing medium; the inventors

preferred air carrying a minute quantity of nitric acid or peroxide of

nitrogen, but they did not confine themselves to those compounds,

having found that chlorine, bromine and other substances capable of

liberating oxygen were also more or less efficacious. They claimed

that while exercising no deleterious action their treatment made the

flour whiter, improved its baking qualities, and rendered it less

liable to be attacked by mites or other organisms. Under the patent,

No. 14006 of 1903, granted to J.N. Alsop of Kentucky the flour was

treated with atmospheric air which had been subjected to the action of

an arc or flaming discharge of electricity, with the purpose of

purifying it and improving its nutritious properties. The Andrews and

Alsop patents became the objects of extended litigation in the English

courts, and it was held that the gaseous medium employed by Alsop was

substantially the same as that employed by Andrews, though produced

electrically instead of chemically, and therefore that the Alsop

process was an infringement of the Andrews patent. Various other

patents for more or less similar processes have also been taken out.

(G. F. Z.)

FLOURENS, GUSTAVE (1838-1871), French revolutionist and writer, a son of

J.P. Flourens (1794-1867), the physiologist, was born at Paris on the

4th of August 1838. In 1863 he undertook for his father a course of

lectures at the College de France, the subject of which was the history

of mankind. His theories as to the manifold origin of the human race,

however, gave offence to the clergy, and he was precluded from

delivering a second course. He then went to Brussels, where he published

his lectures under the title of _Histoire de l'homme_ (1863); he next

visited Constantinople and Athens, took part in the Cretan insurrection

of 1866, spent some time in Italy, where an article of his in the

_Popolo d'Italia_ caused his arrest and imprisonment, and finally,

having returned to France, nearly lost his life in a duel with Paul de

Cassagnac, editor of the _Pays_. In Paris he devoted his pen to the

cause of republicanism, and at length, having failed in an attempt to

organize a revolution at Belleville on the 7th of February 1870, found

himself compelled to flee from France. Returning to Paris on the

downfall of Napoleon, he soon placed himself at the head of a body of

500 tirailleurs. On account of his insurrectionary proceedings he was

taken prisoner at Creteil, near Vincennes, by the provisional

government, and confined at Mazas on the 7th of December 1870, but was

released by his men on the night of January 21-22. On the 18th of March

he joined the Communists. He was elected a member of the commune by the

20th arrondissement, and was named colonel. He was one of the most

active leaders of the insurrection, and in a sortie against the

Versailles troops in the morning of the 3rd of April was killed in a

hand-to-hand conflict at Rueil, near Malmaison. Besides his _Science de

l'homme_ (Paris, 1869), Gustave Flourens was the author of numerous

fugitive pamphlets.

See C. Proles, _Les Hommes de la revolution de 1871_ (Paris, 1898).

FLOURENS, MARIE JEAN PIERRE (1794-1867), French physiologist, was born

at Maureilhan, near Beziers, in the department of Herault, on the 15th

of April 1794. At the age of fifteen he began the study of medicine at

Montpellier, where in 1823 he received the degree of doctor. In the

following year he repaired to Paris, provided with an introduction from

A.P. de Candolle, the botanist, to Baron Cuvier, who received him

kindly, and interested himself in his welfare. At Paris Flourens engaged

in physiological research, occasionally contributing to literary

publications; and in 1821, at the Athenee there, he gave a course of

lectures on the physiological theory of the sensations, which attracted

much attention amongst men of science. His paper entitled _Recherches

experimentales sur les proprietes et les fonctions du systeme nerveux

dans les animaux vertebres_, in which he, from experimental evidence,

sought to assign their special functions to the cerebrum, corpora

quadrigemina and cerebellum, was the subject of a highly commendatory

report by Cuvier, adopted by the French Academy of Sciences in 1822. He

was chosen by Cuvier in 1828 to deliver for him a course of lectures on

natural history at the College de France, and in the same year became,

in succession to L.A.G. Bosc, a member of the Institute, in the division

"Economie rurale." In 1830 he became Cuvier's substitute as lecturer on

human anatomy at the Jardin du Roi, and in 1832 was elected to the post

of titular professor, which he vacated for the professorship of

comparative anatomy created for him at the museum of the Jardin the same

year. In 1833 Flourens, in accordance with the dying request of Cuvier,

was appointed a perpetual secretary of the Academy of Sciences; and in

1838 he was returned as a deputy for the arrondissement of Beziers. In

1840 he was elected, in preference to Victor Hugo, to succeed J.F.

Michaud at the French Academy; and in 1845 he was created a commander of

the legion of honour, and in the next year a peer of France. In March

1847 Flourens directed the attention of the Academy of Sciences to the

anaesthetic effect of chloroform on animals. On the revolution of 1848

he withdrew completely from political life; and in 1855 he accepted the

professorship of natural history at the College de France. He died at

Montgeron, near Paris, on the 6th of December 1867.

Besides numerous shorter scientific memoirs, Flourens

published--_Essai sur quelques points de la doctrine de la revulsion

et de la derivation_ (Montpellier, 1813); _Experiences sur le systeme

nerveux_ (Paris, 1825); _Cours sur la generation, l'ovologie, et

l'embryologie_ (1836); _Analyse raisonnee des travaux de G. Cuvier_

(1841); _Recherches sur le developpement des os et des dents_ (1842);

_Anatomie generale de la peau et des membranes muqueuses_ (1843);

_Buffon, histoire de ses travaux et de ses idees_ (1844); _Fontenelle,

ou de la philosophie moderne relativement aux sciences physiques_

(1847); _Theorie experimentale de la formation des os_ (1847);

_Oeuvres completes de Buffon_ (1853); _De la longevite humaine et de

la quantite de vie sur le globe_ (1854), numerous editions; _Histoire

de la decouverte de la circulation du sang_ (1854); _Cours de

physiologie comparee_ (1856); _Recueil des eloges historiques_ (1856);

_De la vie et de l'intelligence_ (1858); _De la raison, du genie, et

de la folie_ (1861); _Ontologie naturelle_ (1861); _Examen du livre de

M. Darwin sur l'Origine des Especes_ (1864). For a list of his papers

see the Royal Society's _Catalogue of Scientific Papers_.

FLOWER, SIR WILLIAM HENRY (1831-1899), English biologist, was born at

Stratford-on-Avon on the 30th of November 1831. Choosing medicine as his

profession, he began his studies at University College, London, where he

showed special aptitude for physiology and comparative anatomy and took

his M.B. degree in 1851. He then joined the Army Medical Service, and

went out to the Crimea as assistant-surgeon, receiving the medal with

four clasps. On his return to England he became a member of the surgical

staff of the Middlesex hospital, London, and in 1861 succeeded J.T.

Quekett as curator of the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of

Surgeons of England. In 1870 he also became Hunterian professor, and in

1884, on the death of Sir Richard Owen, was appointed to the

directorship of the Natural History Museum at South Kensington. He died

in London on the 1st of July 1899. He made valuable contributions to

structural anthropology, publishing, for example, complete and accurate

measurements of no less than 1300 human skulls, and as a comparative

anatomist he ranked high, devoting himself especially to the study of

the mammalia. He was also a leading authority on the arrangement of

museums. The greater part of his life was spent in their administration,

and in consequence he held very decided views as to the principles upon

which their specimens should be set out. He insisted on the importance

of distinguishing between collections intended for the use of

specialists and those designed for the instruction of the general

public, pointing out that it was as futile to present to the former a

number of merely typical forms as to provide the latter with a long

series of specimens differing only in the most minute details. His

ideas, which were largely and successfully applied to the museums of

which he had charge, gained wide approval, and their influence entitles

him to be looked upon as a reformer who did much to improve the methods

of museum arrangement and management. In addition to numerous original

papers, he was the author of _An Introduction to the Osteology of the

Mammalia_ (1870); _Fashion in Deformity_ (1881); _The Horse: a Study in

Natural History_ (1890); _Introduction to the Study of Mammals, Living

and Extinct_ (1891); _Essays on Museums and other Subjects_ (1898). He

also wrote many articles for the ninth edition of the _Encyclopaedia

Britannica_.

FLOWER (Lat. _flos_, _floris_; Fr. _fleur_), a term popularly used for

the bloom or blossom of a plant, and so by analogy for the fairest,

choicest or finest part or aspect of anything, and in various technical

senses. Here we shall deal only with its botanical interest. It is

impossible to give a rigid botanical definition of the term "flower."

The flower is a characteristic feature of the highest group of the plant

kingdom--the flowering plants (Phanerogams)--and is the name given to

the association of organs, more or less leaf-like in form, which are

concerned with the production of the fruit or seed. In modern botanical

works the group is often known as the seed-plants (Spermatophyta). As

the seed develops from the ovule which has been fertilized by the

pollen, the essential structures for seed-production are two, viz. the

pollen-bearer or _stamen_ and the ovule-bearer or _carpel_. These are

with few exceptions foliar structures, known in comparative morphology

as sporophylls, because they bear the spores, namely, the microspores or

pollen-grains which are developed in the microsporangia or pollen-sacs,

and the megaspore, which is contained in the ovule or megasporangium.

In Gymnosperms (q.v.), which represent the more primitive type of

seed-plants, the micro- or macro-sporophylls are generally associated,

often in large numbers, in separate cones, to which the term "flower"

has been applied. But there is considerable difference of opinion as to

the relation between these cones and the more definite and elaborate

structure known as the flower in the higher group of seed-plants--the

Angiosperms (q.v.)--and it is to this more definite structure that we

generally refer in using the term "flower."

[Illustration: FIG. 1.--Proliferous Rose.

s, Sepals transformed into leaves.

p, Petals multiplied at the expense of the stamens, which are reduced

in number.

c, Coloured leaves representing abortive carpels.

a, Axis prolonged, bearing an imperfect flower at its apex.]

Flowers are produced from flower-buds, just as leaf-shoots arise from

leaf-buds. These two kinds of buds have a resemblance to each other as

regards the arrangement and the development of their parts; and it

sometimes happens, from injury and other causes, that the part of the

axis which, in ordinary cases, would produce a leaf-bud, gives origin to

a flower-bud. A flower-bud has not in ordinary circumstances any power

of extension by the continuous development of its apex. In this respect

it differs from a leaf-bud. In some cases, however, of monstrosity,

especially seen in the rose (fig. 1), the central part is prolonged, and

bears leaves or flowers. In such cases the flowers, so far as their

functional capabilities are concerned, are usually abortive. This

phenomenon is known as proliferation of the floral axis.

Flower-buds, like leaf-buds, are produced in the axil of leaves, which

are called _bracts_.

Bracts.

The term _bract_ is properly applied to the leaf from which the primary

floral axis, whether simple or branched, arises, while the leaves which

arise on the axis between the bract and the outer envelope of the flower

are _bracteoles_ or _bractlets_. Bracts sometimes do not differ from the

ordinary leaves, as in _Veronica hederifolia_, _Vinca_, _Anagallis_ and

_Ajuga_. In general as regards their form and appearance they differ

from ordinary leaves, the difference being greater in the upper than in

the lower branches of an inflorescence. They are distinguished by their

position at the base of the flower or flower-stalk. Their arrangement is

similar to that of the leaves. When the flower is sessile the bracts are

often applied closely to the calyx, and may thus be confounded with it,

as in the order Malvaceae and species of _Dianthus_ and winter aconite

(_Eranthis_), where they have received the name of _epicalyx_ or

_calyculus_. In some Rosaceous plants an epicalyx is present, due to the

formation of stipulary structures by the sepals. In many cases bracts

act as protective organs, within or beneath which the young flowers are

concealed in their earliest stage of growth.

When bracts become coloured, as in _Amherstia nobilis_, _Euphorbia

splendens_, _Erica elegans_ and _Salvia splendens_, they may be mistaken

for parts of the corolla. They are sometimes mere scales or threads, and

at other times are undeveloped, giving rise to the _ebracteate_

inflorescence of Cruciferae and some Boraginaceae. Sometimes they are

empty, no flower-buds being produced in their axil. A series of empty

coloured bracts terminates the inflorescence of _Salvia Horminum_. The

smaller bracts or bracteoles, which occur among the subdivisions of a

branching inflorescence, often produce no flower-buds, and thus

anomalies occur in the floral arrangements. Bracts are occasionally

persistent, remaining long attached to the base of the peduncles, but

more usually they are deciduous, falling off early by an articulation.

In some instances they form part of the fruit, becoming incorporated

with other organs. Thus, the cones of firs and the stroboli of the hop

are composed of a series of spirally arranged bracts covering fertile

flowers; and the scales on the fruit of the pine-apple are of the same

nature. At the base of the general umbel in umbelliferous plants a whorl

of bracts often exists, called a _general involucre_, and at the base of

the smaller umbels or umbellules there is a similar leafy whorl called

an _involucel_ or _partial involucre_. In some instances, as in

fool's-parsley, there is no general involucre, but simply an involucel;

while in other cases, as in fennel or dill (fig. 15), neither involucre

nor involucel is developed. In Compositae the name involucre is applied

to the bracts surrounding the head of flowers (fig. 2, i), as in

marigold, dandelion, daisy, artichoke. This involucre is frequently

composed of several rows of leaflets, which are either of the same or of

different forms and lengths, and often lie over each other in an

imbricated manner. The leaves of the involucre are spiny in thistles and

in teazel (_Dipsacus_), and hooked in burdock. Such whorled or

verticillate bracts generally remain separate (_polyphyllous_), but may

be united by cohesion (_gamophyllous_), as in many species of

_Bupleurum_ and in _Lavatera_. In Compositae besides the involucre there

are frequently chaffy and setose bracts at the base of each flower, and

in Dipsacaceae a membranous tube surrounds each flower. These structures

are of the nature of an epicalyx. In the acorn the _cupule_ or cup (fig.

3) is formed by a growing upwards of the flower-stalk immediately

beneath the flower, upon which scaly or spiny protuberances appear; it

is of the nature of bracts. Bracts also compose the husky covering of

the hazel-nut.

[Illustration: FIG. 2.--Head (capitulum) of Marigold (_Calendula_),

showing a congeries of flowers, enclosed by rows of bracts, i, at the

base, which are collectively called an involucre.]

[Illustration: From Strasburger's _Lehrbuch der Botanik_, by permission

of Gustav Fischer.

FIG. 3.--Cupule of _Quercus Aegilops_. cp, Cupule; gl, fruit. (After

Duchartre.)]

When bracts become united, and overlie each other in several rows, it

often happens that the outer ones do not produce flowers, that is, are

empty or sterile. In the artichoke the outer imbricated scales or bracts

are in this condition, and it is from the membranous white scales or

bracts (_paleae_) forming the choke attached to the edible receptacle

that the flowers are produced. The sterile bracts of the daisy

occasionally produce capitula, and give rise to the hen-and-chickens

daisy. In place of developing flower-buds, bracts may, in certain

circumstances, as in proliferous or viviparous plants, produce

leaf-buds.

A sheathing bract enclosing one or several flowers is called a _spathe_.

It is common among Monocotyledons, as _Narcissus_ (fig. 4), snow-flake,

_Arum_ and palms. In some palms it is 20 ft. long, and encloses 200,000

flowers. It is often associated with that form of inflorescence termed

the _spadix_, and may be coloured, as in _Anthurium_, or white, as in

arum lily (_Richardia aethiopica_). When the spadix is compound or

branching, as in palms, there are smaller spathes, surrounding separate

parts of the inflorescence. The spathe protects the flowers in their

young state, and often falls off after they are developed, or hangs down

in a withered form, as in some palms, _Typha_ and _Pothos_. In grasses

the outer scales or glumes of the spikelets are sterile bracts (fig. 5,

gl); and in Cyperaceae bracts enclose the organs of reproduction. Bracts

are frequently changed into complete leaves. This change is called

_phyllody_ of bracts, and is seen in species of _Plantago_, especially

in the variety of _Plantago media_, called the rose-plantain in gardens,

where the bracts become leafy and form a rosette round the flowering

axis. Similar changes occur in _Plantago major_, _P. lanceolata_, _Ajuga

reptans_, dandelion, daisy, dahlia and in umbelliferous plants. The

conversion of bracts into stamens (_staminody_ of bracts) has been

observed in the case of _Abies excelsa_. A lengthening of the axis of

the female strobilus of Coniferae is not of infrequent occurrence in

_Cryptomeria japonica_, larch (_Larix europaea_), &c., and this is

usually associated with a leaf-like condition of the bracts, and

sometimes even with the development of leaf-bearing shoots in place of

the scales.

[Illustration: FIG. 4.--Flowers of Narcissus (_Narcissus Tazetta_)

bursting from a sheathing bract b.]

[Illustration: FIG. 5.--Spikelet of Oat (_Avena sativa_) laid open,

showing the sterile bracts gl, gl, or empty glumes; g, the fertile or

floral glume, with a dorsal awn a; p, the pale; fs, an abortive flower.]

The arrangement of the flowers on the axis, or the ramification of the

floral axis, is called the _inflorescence_. The primary axis of the

inflorescence is sometimes called the _rachis_; its branches, whether

terminal or lateral, which form the stalks supporting flowers or

clusters of flowers, are _peduncles_, and if small branches are given

off by it, they are called _pedicels_. A flower having a stalk is called

_pedunculate_ or _pedicellate_; one having no stalk is _sessile_. In

describing a branching inflorescence, it is common to speak of the

rachis as the _primary_ floral axis, its branches as the _secondary_

floral axes, their divisions as the _tertiary_ floral axes, and so on;

thus avoiding any confusion that might arise from the use of the terms

_rachis_, _peduncle_ and _pedicel_.

[Illustration: FIG. 6.--Peduncle of Fig (_Ficus Carica_), ending in a

hollow receptacle, enclosing numerous male and female flowers.]

The _peduncle_ is simple, bearing a single flower, as in primrose; or

branched, as in London-pride. It is sometimes succulent, as in the

cashew, in which it forms the large coloured expansion supporting the

nut; spiral, as in _Cyclamen_ and _Vallisneria_; or spiny, as in

_Alyssum spinosum_. When the peduncle proceeds from radical leaves, that

is, from an axis which is so shortened as to bring the leaves close

together in the form of a cluster, as in the primrose, auricula or

hyacinth, it is termed a _scape_. The floral axis may be shortened,

assuming a flattened, convex or concave form, and bearing numerous

flowers, as in the artichoke, daisy and fig (fig. 6). The floral axis

sometimes appears as if formed by several peduncles united together,

constituting a fasciated axis, as in the cockscomb, in which the flowers

form a peculiar crest at the apex of the flattened peduncles. Adhesions

occasionally take place between the peduncle and the bracts or leaves of

the plant, as in the lime-tree (fig. 7). The adhesion of the peduncles

to the stem accounts for the extra-axillary position of flowers, as in

many Solanaceae. When this union extends for a considerable length along

the stem, several leaves may be interposed between the part where the

peduncle becomes free and the leaf whence it originated, and it may be

difficult to trace the connexion. The peduncle occasionally becomes

abortive, and in place of bearing a flower, is transformed into a

tendril; at other times it is hollowed at the apex, so as apparently to

form the lower part of the outer whorl of floral leaves as in

_Eschscholtzia_. The termination of the peduncle, or the part on which

the whorls of the flower are arranged, is called the _thalamus_, _torus_

or _receptacle_.

[Illustration: (From Vines' _Students' Text-Book of Botany_, by

permission of Swan Sonnenschein & Co.)

FIG. 7.--Inflorescence of the Lime (_Tilia platyphyllos_) (nat. size).

a, Branch.

b, Petiole with axillary bud. Attached to the peduncle is the bract

(h).

k, Calyx.

c, Corolla.

s, Stamens.

f, Ovary.

kn, Flower-bud.]

[Illustration: (From Strasburger's _Lehrbuch der Botanik_, by permission

of Gustav Fischer.)