in Husbandry, the husks of the corn, separated by screening or winnowing it. It signifies also the rind of corn, and straw cut small for the use of cattle.

CHAFF-Cutter, a machine for making chaff to feed horses. The advantages of an easy and expeditious method of cutting straw into chaff, by an engine which could be used by common labourers, have been long acknowledged; and various attempts have been made to bring such an engine to perfection. But the objections to most of them have been their complicated structure, their great price, and the noise they make in working; all which inconveniences seem to have been lately removed by an invention of Mr James Pike, watchmaker at Newton Abbot in Devonshire. Of his engine, which is of a simple and cheap construction, the following description, and figure referred to, are extracted from the Transactions of the Society of Arts, for 1787.

The engine is fixed on a wooden frame, which is supported with four legs, and on this frame is a box for containing the straw, four feet six inches long; and about ten inches broad; at one end is fixed across the box two rollers inlaid with iron, in a diagonal line about an eighth of an inch above the surface; on the ends of these rollers are fixed two strong brass wheels, which take one into the other. On one of these wheels is a contract wheel, whose teeth take in a worm on a large arbor; on the end of this arbor is fixed a wooden wheel, two feet five inches diameter and three inches thick; on the inside part of this wheel is fixed a knife, and every revolution of the wheel the knife passes before the end of the box and cuts the chaff, which is brought forward between the rollers, which are about two inches and a half asunder; the straw is brought on by the worm taking one tooth of the wheel every round of the knife; the straw being so hard pressed between the rollers, the knife cuts off the chaff with so great ease, that 22 bushels can be cut within the hour, and makes no more noise than is caused by the knife passing through the chaff.

A is the box into which the straw is put. B, the upper roller, with its diagonal projecting ribs of iron, the whole moving by the revolution of the brass wheel C on the axis of which it is fixed. D, a brass wheel, having upon it a face wheel, whose teeth take into the endless screw on the arbor E, while the teeth on the edge of this wheel enter between those on the edge of the wheel C. On the axis of the wheel D is a roller, with iron ribs similar to B, but hid within the box. E, the arbor, one of the ends of which being made square and passing through a mortise in the centre of the wooden wheel F, is fastened by a strong screw and nut; the other end of this arbor moves round in a hole within the wooden block G. H, the knife, made fast by screws to the wooden wheel F, and kept at the distance of nearly three quarters of an inch from it by means of a strip of wood of that thickness, of the form of the blade, and reaching to within an inch of the edge. I, the handle mortised into the outside of the wooden wheel F.