itude. For what the
cotton planter owes to Eli Whitney, the rice planter owes to Mr.
Lucas. His mills were first impelled by water, but more recently by
steam, and though much mechanical ingenuity and much capital have
been expended in improving them, the rice pounding-mill of this day,
in all essential particulars, does not differ materially from the
mill as it came from the hands of Mr. Lucas.

This great impediment being removed, one formidable difficulty still
remained in the way of the rice planters, and that was the threshing
of the crop by flail. The labor requisite to accomplish this was so
great, that we once heard a distinguished planter say, while having
one large crop threshed out by flail, that he would regard another
large crop as a calamity. Previous to 1830 threshing mills had been
tried by various individuals, but with no apparent success. In that
year the attempt was renewed, and we were present and witnessed the
first trial of a thresher, constructed in New York, and which was
tested on Savannah river, under the auspices of General Hamilton.
The machinery was driven by apparatus similar to that employed for
driving the cotton gin. The result was not very satisfactory, but
there was ground for hope, and after an outlay of very large sums,
and after many disappointments, the happy expedient was thought of,
of testing the mill with steam instead of animal power. The
experiment was completely successful, and it was manifest at once
that the difficulties had not been in the imperfect construction, of
the thresher, but in the insufficiency of the moving power.

It is now twenty years since we witnessed the working of the small
mill alluded to, and the rice threshing-mill, with steam-engine
attached, is now a splendid piece of operative machinery. The rice
in sheaf is taken up to the thresher by a conveyor, it is threshed,
the straw taken off, then thrice winnowed and twice screened, and
the result in some cases exceeds a thousand bushels of clean rough
rice, the work of a short winter day.

Humanity rejoices at these inventions--at this transfer to water and
steam, of processes so slow and so exhausting to the human as well
as to the animal frame--and in this feeling we are confident every
planter deeply sympathises. Moreover, the relief they have afforded
in othe