Many modes of preparing grain, either in cakes or bread, are seen in the paintings discovered in the tombs of the Egyptians; but doubtless for many years the chief food was fish, flesh, or fruit. The Indians used a kind of wild corn, when driven to it by the scarcity of game, or if unsuccessful in hunting; but they never attempted to cultivate it. They boiled it when green, or baked it on hot stones, or roasted it by their fires, as we do the cultivated Indian-corn. Maize or Turkish wheat and a kind of millet are still used, unground, among the poorer classes in Egypt, boiled in milk or water, or roasted. At a later period, rude stones were made to separate the husks from the kernel; and not long since, it may be even now, in the remote parts of Scotland, a large block of hard wood was dug out smoothly, and after the grain had been well dried, the barley or oats was beaten in it till the husk was removed. When sufficiently broken or bruised to loosen the hull, it was scooped up into the hand, little by little, and blown gently with the mouth to remove all the husk, and then made into pottage or porridge. It now seems a small thing to have all our grain ground and sifted by machinery worked by steam; but how tedious must have been the ancient process! The _quern_ used in Scotland to remove the husk and prepare the barley for use is supposed to have found its way thither through the Romans, who always carried hand-mills in their marches or raids upon other nations. It is very simple, and perhaps the first kind of corn mill on record. “The quern was made of two stones,” says Dr. Johnson, “a foot and a half in diameter; the lower stone a little convex; to which the concavity of the upper stone was fitted. In the middle of the upper one was a round hole, and on one side a long handle. The grinder gradually shred the corn into this hole with one hand, and worked the handle with the other. Thus the corn slid down into the hollow of the lower stone, and by the motion of the upper was ground in the passage.” The quern acts so much on the principle of our mill-stones that our mills might be called querns, built on a larger scale, and run by steam or machinery. The meal thus ground was made into pottage or porridge, being boiled in milk or water, or “brose” when it was roasted, and boiled up in water in which salt meat had been cooked.