Hand tools have improved, of course, as other arts in wood and iron making have developed, but the operations are about the same. There were and must be fleshing knives to scrape from off the hide the adherent flesh and lime,--for this the hide is placed over the convex edge of an inclined beam and the work is called beaming; the curriers’ knife for removing the hair; skiving, or the cutting off the rough edges and fleshy parts on the border of the hide; shaving and flattening; the cutting away of the inequalities left after skiving; _stoning_, the rubbing of the leather by a scouring stone to render it smooth; _slicking_, to remove the water and grease; or to smooth and polish, by a rectangular sharpened stone, steel or glass tool; _whitening_, to shave off thin strips of the flesh, leaving the leather thinner, whiter and more pliable; _stuffing_, to soften the scraped and pounded hides and make them porous; _graining_, the giving to the hair or grain side a granular appearance by rubbing with a grooved or roughened piece of wood; _bruising_ or boarding to make the leather supple and pliable by bringing the two flesh sides together and rubbing with a graining board; _scouring_, by aid of a stream of water to whiten the leather by rubbing with a slicking stone or steel. The inventions of the century consist in labour-saving machinery for these purposes, new tanning and dressing processes, and innumerable machines for making special articles of leather. As before stated, the epoch of modern machinery commenced with the practical application of water power to other than grinding mills, and of steam in place of water, contemporaneously with the invention of spinning and weaving machinery in the last half of the eighteenth century. These got fairly to work at the beginning of the century, and the uses of machinery spread to the treatment of leather. John Bull was the appropriate name of the man who first patented a scraping machine in England, about 1780, and Joseph Weeks the next one, some years later. One of the earliest machines of the century was the hide mill, which, after the hand tools had scraped and stoned, shaved and hardened the hides, was used to rub and dub them, and soften and swell them for tanning. Pegged rollers were the earliest form for this purpose, and later corrugated rollers and power-worked hammers were employed. Hundreds of hides could be softened daily by these means.