This framework, already mentioned, was on two sills usually of soft wood. There were the four corner upright posts and two additional ones on each side. These were joined to the top rail which was about four feet from the floor of the mill. To these uprights, strips one half inch by three inches were fastened by small bolts. The front of the mill was boarded from the level of the floor to the top. Two stationary feed boxes were built into the front for feeding oats to the horses if the need arose.

The floor of the mill consisted of 2 x 9 hardwood plank, five feet long. These plank had heavy straps of iron on each end, these were bolted to the plank. There was an eye at both end of these straps, and a rod passed through these eyes to keep the adjoining planks together, thus making an endless jointed floor of hinged planks. All that is chiefly the wooden part of a “horse power”.

As Josh Billings said: The “innards" are next .and they are the hardest to explain. First of all, three small-sized wheels on each end of the rods, these were solid with exception of the hole in the centre for the rod to enter. There were two tracks on which these wheels ran, a lower and an upper track. At the front end of the mill. or horse power, there were what was called crowfoot octagonal wheels, one on each side of the mill inside the frame work. There was a large cog wheel on the same spindle or shaft that the crowfoot wheels were on, and this cog wheel meshed into a smaller one on the spindle or shaft to which the large fly—wheel of the horse power was attached and on which the belt which turned the six-inch pulley that was securely attached to drum of the thresher. The belt was fairly heavy and made of leather or rubber fabric. It was between 5 and 6 inches wide. The mill was stopped by applying a brake to the fly-wheel of the horse-power.

That type of threshing outfit disappeared years ago when it was replaced by the modern type of a combination thresher and cleaner; driven by a gasoline engine, (the Hall Company‘s “fanners” were used to separate the chaff from the grain), which in turn has been displaced by the combine“ that cuts and threshes the grain all in one operation. That is a far cry from the days of the flail. I have gone into a lot of detail in explaining the different methods of threshing, because Mon— tague is situated in the midst of a large agriculture district. all the early settlers were farmers. Yes! A change from the reaping hook, scythe and flail.

THE RAILWAY CAR COUPLER

In this story of Montague, I want to take you to an adjoining dis- trictwthe Whini Road; for it was here that a genius was born. That genius was Alexander Martin. Mr. Martin was a young man when the writer was a lad ten years old. That was back in 1.890. i remember seeing him at John Dewar’s, Montague Road North.

This man Martin invented a potato digger, and many other very useful appliances, among them the pawl wrench, known as the “Martin" pawl wrench. Mr. Martin had a very fertile brain, and he had a pair of hands that worked in unison with that brain. He could make the wooden models of his inventions. Due to his creative mind this man has saved the fingers, and possibly the hands of thousands of railway brake- men who have worked on the trains of Canada and the United States. and no doubt in other countries as well. Mr. Martin invented the car coupler which replaced the old link and pin. method.

It is a regrettable fact, that before Mr. Martin got around to have his invention of the coupler patented, unscrupulous men did so, and gypped him out of hte fruits of his labours: otherwise Mr. Martin could have been a very wealthy man.