Corn was at first ground in a portative hand mill; by the Britons, women and young girls were employed in this kind of labour.[III-44] It is, however, probable that watermills were known at a very early period in England. Strutt cites a passage from a charter by Ulfere, in 664, which warrants the supposition.[III-45] It would be difficult to point out the precise date of the first employment of mills; nevertheless, Somner informs us, in his “Antiquities of Canterbury,”[III-46] that the Anglo-Normans of that place ground their corn. “There was,” says he, “sometime a windmill standing neare the nonnery without Ridingate, which the hospitall held by the grant of the nonnes there: the conditions mutually agreed upon, at the time of the grant, were that the nonnes, bearing the fourth part of the charge of the mill, should reap the fourth part of the profit of it, &c. * * * and this about the reign of King John.” The bran was separated from the flour by means of a sieve; the dough was made, and sent to the bakers to be baked. The poor contented themselves with cakes baked under the ashes.[III-47] Something remains to be said of windmills. We will say but little on the subject: this aerial mechanism--which the knight-errant, Don Quixote, of imperishable memory, thought it necessary to fight with sword and lance--was unknown before the Christian era in any nation whose writers have transmitted to us the least traces of their civilisation; but nothing proves that windmills were unknown to others. This opinion seems to be well-founded, from a passage of the chronicler Winceslaus, who relates, in his “History of Bohemia,” that the first watermill raised in that country was in the year of Christ 718, and that no other was in use before (_antea_) but mills built on the summit of mountains, which were put in motion by the wind.[III-48] It appears, then, that there is some untruth in the assertion, that this sort of mill was introduced into Europe, about the year 1040, by the first Crusaders, on their return from the East.[III-49] At all events this question is no doubt very deserving the laborious search of the learned; it has but a secondary interest for the gastrophilist. It matters little to him whether he owes the grinding of his corn to the breath of a zephyr or to the slimy source of a river; all he requires is good flour, because it enters into a great number of culinary preparations--and, first of all, bread is made from it. IV. MANIPULATION OF FLOUR.