Groaning boards were the wonder in London in 1682. An elm plank was exhibited to the king, which, being touched by a hot iron, invariably produced a sound resembling deep groans. At the Bowman Tavern, in Drury Lane, the mantel-piece did the same so well that it was supposed to be part of the same elm-tree; and the dresser at the Queen's Arm Tavern, St. Martin le Grand, was found to possess the same quality. Strange times when such things were deemed wonderful; even to meriting exhibition before the monarch.
ANCIENT PLOUGHING AND THRESHING.
The ancient plough was light, the draught comparatively easy; but then the very lightness required that the ploughman should lean upon it with his whole weight, or else it would glide over the soil without making a single furrow. "Unless," said Pliny, "the ploughman stoop forward, to press down the plough, as well as to conduct it, truly it will turn aside."
Oxen were anciently employed in threshing corn, and the same custom is still retained in Egypt and the east. This operation is effected by trampling upon the sheaves, and by dragging a clumsy machine, furnished with three rollers that turn on their axles. A wooden chair is attached to the machine, and on this a driver seats himself, urging his oxen backwards and forwards among the sheaves, which have previously been thrown into a heap of about eight feet wide and two in height. The grain thus beaten out, is collected in an open place, and shaken against the wind by an attendant, with a small shovel, or, as it is termed, a winnowing fan, which disperses the chaff and leaves the grain uninjured:—
"Thus, with autumnal harvests covered o'er,
And thick bestrewn, lies Ceres' sacred floor;
While round and round, with never-wearied pain,