important one at that, under the new regime, viz., that of reducing
the finer purified middlings to flour. The reason for this lies in the
peculiar construction of the wheat berry. If the interior of the berry
were one solid mass of flour, needing only to be broken up to the
requisite fineness, it could be done as well on the rolls. But instead
of this, as is well known, the flour part of the berry is made up of
a large number of granules or cells, the walls of which are cellular
tissue, different from the bran in that it is soft and white instead of
hard and dark colored. It is also fibrous to a certain extent, and when
the fine middlings are passed between the rolls instead of breaking
down and becoming finer, it has a tendency to cake up and flatten out,
rendering the flour soft and flaky. It does not hurt the color, but it
does hurt the strength. When the millstone is used in place of the roll
the flour is of equally good color, and more round and granular. I
know that in this the advocates of smooth rolls will differ from my
conclusions, but I believe that the final outcome will be the use of
millstones on the finer middlings, and in fact on all the middlings that
are thoroughly freed from the germ.

It has been said that that which a man gives the most freely and
receives with the worst grace is advice. I will, however, close with a
little of the article which may not be wholly put of place. If you have
a mill do not imagine that the addition of a few pairs of rolls, a
purifier or two, and a little overhauling of bolting-chests, is going to
make it a full-fledged Hungarian roller mill. If you are going to change
an old mill or build a new one, do not take the counsel or follow the
plans of every itinerant miller or millwright who claims to know all
about gradual reduction. No matter what kind of a mill you want to
build, go to some milling engineer who has a reputation for good work,
tell him how large a mill you want, show him samples of the wheat it