HKB
Dondlinger, in his excellent Book of Wheat (1908), which should be in the hands of every grain farmer, gives a picture reproducing the Gallic header and says:
"After being used during hundreds of years the Gallic header disappeared, and it seems to have been completely forgotten for several centuries. Only through literature did it escape the fate of permanent oblivion and become a heritage for the modern world. The published description of the machine by Pliny and Palladius furnished the impulse in which modern harvesting inventions originated. Its distinctive features are retained in several modern inventions of this class, machines which have a practical use and value under conditions similar to those which existed on the plains of Gaul. Toward the close of the eighteenth century, the social, economic and agricultural conditions in England, on account of increasing competition and the higher value of labour, were ripe for the movement of invention that was heralded by the printed account of the Gallic header. The first header was constructed by William Pitt in 1786. It was an attempted improvement on the ancient machine in that the stripping teeth were placed in a cylinder which was revolved by power transmitted from the wheels. This 'rippling cylinder' carried the heads of the wheat into the box of the machine, and gradually evolved into the present day reel."
It may be added that the William Pitt mentioned was not the statesman, but a contemporary agricultural writer of the same name.]
[Footnote 97: According to Sir Anthony Fitzherbert it was the custom in England to shear wheat and rye and to leave the straw standing after the third method described by Varro, the purpose being to preserve the straw to be cut later for thatching, as threshing it would necessarily destroy its value for thatching. It was the custom in England, however, to mow barley and oats.]
[Footnote 98: Pliny advises that the grain which collects on the circumference of a threshing floor of this description be saved for seed because it is evidently the heaviest.]
[Footnote 99: In the Apennines today the threshing floor, or aja, is anointed with cow dung smeared smooth with water, doubtless for the same reason that the Romans so used amurca.]
[Footnote 100: Between harvests the winnowing basket is quite generally used in Italy today for a cradle, as it was from the beginning of time, for there is an ancient gem representing the infant Bacchus asleep in a winnowing basket.]
[Footnote 101: What the French call, from the same practice, vin de rognure.]
[Footnote 102: Varro does not mention the season of the olive harvest, but Virgil tells us (G. II, 519) that in their day as now it was winter. Cato (XX-XXII) described the construction and operation of the trapetus in detail. 'It can still be seen in operation in Italy, turned by a patient donkey and flowing with the new oil of an intense blue-green colour. It is always flanked by an array of vast storage jars (Cato's dolii now called orci), which make one realize the story of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.]
[Footnote 103: The Roman waste of amurca, through ignorance of its value, was like the American waste of the cotton seed, which for many years was thrown out from the gin to rot upon the ground, even its fertilizing use being neglected. Now cotton seed has a market value equivalent to nearly 20 per cent of that of the staple. It is used for cattle feed and also is made into lard and "pure olive oil," being exported in bulk and imported again in bottles with Italian labels.]