m m mi am LEEDS UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Classmark: COOI&tt ft LAM 3 0106 01104 350 c_ } VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES USED FOR THE FOOD OF MAN, BY DR. LANKESTER. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS. LONDON : M. A NATTALI, 23, BEDFORD STREET, COVENT GARDEN. uKivt.Wiin library ItEDS Ly ^ebio CONTENTS Introduction page , i CHAPTER I. The Cerealia, it Corn-Plants generally ... 9 CHAPTER II. Wheat 28 CHAPTER III. Rye — Barley — Oats . . . On the use of Corn in England CHAPTER IV. Rice Maize — Millet — CHAPTER V Buck-Wheat . . CHAPTER VI. 51 73 81 99 The Potato . ., .125 CHAPTER VII. Other Vegetable Substances used for Substantive Food . 152 CHAPTER VIII. Wild Plants used as food . . . . . .178 CHAPTER IX. On Vegetable Gardening 196 VI CONTENTS. Leguminous Plants CHAPTER X PAaa . 211 Succulent Roots CHAPTER XI • • • • . 227 CHAPTER XII. Brassica — Spinaceous Plants — Asparaginous Plants . 257 Alliaceous Plants CHAPTER XIII. • • • • • • . 285 CHAPTER XIV. Acetarious Plants, &c. — Seasoning Herbs . . . 299 Esculent Fungi CHAPTER XV. • • • • • • . 325 Spices . . CHAPTER XVI. . 339 Coffee — Cacao — Tea CHAPTER XVII. — Sugar .... . 365 *** The following Note should have been inserted at page 74. Pierce Plowman was an anonymous writer of satires against the Popish clergy. These productions, which ate exceedingly bitter, are attributed to Robert Langluude, a secular priest, and fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. ILLUSTRATIONS. No. 1. Grain of Wheat, upper and under sides . . 2. Ear and Plant of Spring Wheat 3. Ear and Plant of Winter Wheat 4. Ear and Plant of Duck-Bill Wheat 5. Ear and Plant of Egyptian or many-spiked Wheat 6. Ear and Piant of Polish Wheat . 7. Ear and Plant of Spelt Wheat 8. Ear and Plant of one-seeded Wheat . 9 Wheat-fly ( Musca pumihonis ) in its different stages 10. Corn Mildew ( Uredo frumenti ) greatly magnified . 11. Ear and plant of Rye ..... 12. Ear and Plant of Common Spring Barley 13. Premature germination of an Ear of Barley 14. Ear and Plant of Winter Barley . . . 15. Ear and Plant of Two-rowed Barley . . 16. Common bearded Oats, and Common Oats . 17. Thames Corn-Barge ..... 18. hlar and Plant of Rice . 19. Rice-birds, male and female .... 20. Maize — Zea mays ...... 21. Ears of Maize, in different stages . 22. Italian Millet — Sitaria Italica .... 23. Buck-wheat — Polygonum fagopyrum . . 24. Cassava — Jatropha manihot .... 25. Indians preparing Cassava .... 26. Salep — Orchis mascula . . . . . 27. Indian Arrow-root — Maranta arundinacea . 28. Wake-Robin — Arurn macu/atum . . . . 29. Sweet Potato — Convolvulus batata . . 30. Yam — Dioseorea sativa ..... 31. Different sorts of Yam-roots .... 32. The Banana ....... Page . 28 30 . 32 33 . 34 35 . 36 37 . 41 48 . 51 57 . 60 62 . 63 69 . 80 82 . 95 99 . 108 116 . 122 153 . 156 158 . 162 164 . 165 167 . 168 170 33. Stem of the Sago-tree, showing the pith from which the Sago is extracted . . . . .173 34. Cabbage-Palm — Areca oleracea . . . . 177 Vlll ILLUSTRATIONS. No. Page 35. Couch-grass ....... 179 36. Flower and Root of the Wild Parsnip . . .183 37. Iceland Moss — Lichen islandicus . . . .184 38. Pile-wort — Ficana ranunculoides . . . 186 39. Great Cat’s Tail — Typha patustris . . .188 40. Rampion — Campanula rapunculus . . . 191 41. Samphire — Crithomum maritimum .... 194 42. Chick-Pea — Cicer arietinum .... 223 43. Flowers and Pods of the Turnip .... 228 44. Umbel of the Carrot . . . . .237 45. Flowers and Roots of the Skirret .... 249 46. Flower and Root of Scorzonera .... 254 47. Colewort — Brassicaoleracea ..... 262 48. Spinach — Spinacia oleracea .... 269 49. New Zealand Spinach — Tetragonia expansa . . 273 50. Cardoon — Cermum cardunculus .... 284 51. Tree-Onion — Allium proliferum .... 290 52. Garlic — Allium sativum . . . . .296 53. Rhubarb — Rheum palmatum . . . . • 309 54. Capsicum . . . . . . .313 55. Black and White Truffles ..... 329 56. Morelles — Phalli esculenti . . • .331 57. Common Mushrooms — Agaricus campestris and Agaricus auruntiacus ..... . 332 58. Champignons — Agaricus pratensis . • . 335 59. True Cinnamon — Laurus cinnamomum . . . 342 60. The Clove — Caryophyllata .... 348 61. Nutmeg — Myristica moschata .... 352 62. Ginger — Zingiber officinale .... 356 63. Allspice — Myrtus pimenta ..... 362 64. Coffee, with the Flower and Berry • . • 365 65. Tea — Thea viridis . • • * * .375 66. Tea-gathering, from a Chinese drawing • 67. Sugar-Canes ••••••* 382 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES USED FOR THE FOOD OF MAN. INTRODUCTION. The culture of the earth is a pursuit which in itsel offers a sufficient distinction, not only between man and the inferior orders of animate creation, but also between man while in his merely animal state, and after he has become humanized by adopting the arts of civilization. It is this pursuit which must, in fact, precede, and be made the foundation for all other useful and ennobling occupations, — the spring whence must flow, certainly, the greater part of those reciprocal duties and affections which at once * form society, and render it the source of enjoyments. That man who first, among a tribe of hunters or fishers, sows a grain or plants a root, and thus brings home the advantages of forethought to the ‘ busi- ness and the bosoms ’ of his less provident fellows, becomes their benefactor, not merely by pointing out the means for avoiding the horrors of famine, and for lessening that succession of miseries which must attend upon a life of wandering, but also, by relieving their minds from the selfish exigencies that previ- ously attended every moment, affording thereby lei- B 2 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. sure and opportunity for cultivating the social and kindly affections. It is not until men have placed themselves beyond that state of merely physical ex- istence wherein the plenty of to-day may be followed by the destitution of to-morrow, that the higher fa- culties and feelings of our nature can be expandea. It must certainly, therefore, be matter of more than common interest to obtain some knowledge of those vegetable substances through the cultivation of which man has been enabled to localize himself, to reap and to store up harvests ; and by thus becoming freed from an incessant call upon his physical energies for the supply of his necessities, to acquire the motives and the means for becoming something higher and better in the scale of beinff. Vegetables form the primary source of sustenance to everything that lives. Were the earth without them and bare — and but for cultivation how much of it would be in that state — the effects of heat and cold, of drought and rain, would be so violent, that apart from all considerations as to food, the whole world would speedily become uninhabitable. Frosts and drought would break, and the returning water would wash away the surface, until the whole would become one wide and swampy waste. The presence of vegetation prevents this desolating action, and converts what otherwise would be destructive agents, into ministers of abundance. No vegetable produc- tions tend so much to bring about this beneficial result as those which are cultivated for human food. By the shade which they afford to the ground in the hot season, they check that evaporation, and prevent that excessive hardening of the surface, which, in an exposed wild, render the soil impervious and inert ; while, on the other hand, the humidity which they imbibe during the rainy season is again given out by continual and gradual evaporation, and they minister INTRODUCTION. 3 to the refreshment and the productiveness of all around them. In countries which are uncultivated the wea- ther is mostly in extremes. Rain, when it comes, takes the form of an overwhelming flood, not gently entering into and moistening the soil, but rushing along the surface, tearing up one place, strewing another with the debris, and reducing both to a state of indiscriminate ruin ; while scarcely has the flood gone by, when the returning heat evaporates the little moisture which is left behind, and burns up the coarse and scanty vegetation which the rains had fostered. These effects of the unmitigated action of the ele- ments are most strongly marked in those parts of the world where hitherto the seasons have defied the labour of man, and have seemed to wage war upon his agriculture. This is the case in some parts of India, in Southern Africa, and in a great part of what we yet know of Australia, where at one time the earth is parched up, and the beds of rivers become dry channels or unconnected pools, while at another they suddenly pour onward to the sea in a wide spreading inundation, or roll their rapid floods in narrow but deepened channels. That the labours of cultivation exert the most beneficial effect upon climate may be shown, by contrasting the waste and uncultivated parts of our own country with other parts in the same latitude, and at the same elevation above the level of the sea, but which are in a state of high cultiva- tion. In these, while the immediate object of pro- viding a certain and abundant supply of food has been accomplished by the labours of man, an indi- rect influence has been exerted scarcelv less beneficial, by rendering the country in general more healthy and agreeable. In the central parts of Scotland, where the intro- duction of agricultural improvements has been much 4 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. more recent than in England, but where, owing to causes whose investigation would be misplaced in these pages, their progress has been much more rapid, the change of climate has fully kept pace with those improvements. It is within the expe- rience of persons still living, to have noticed that the snow, which in that country formerly began to fall in November, was not wholly gone until the month of April ; while in the middle of summer the heat was so excessive that agricultural labourers were obliged to suspend their toil during four or five hours in the middle of the day. At that time the autumnal rains frequently descended with so much violence, that the crops, which had been retarded by the coldness of the spring, were prevented from ripening on the high grounds, were lodged and rotted on lands that were lower, and swept away by the swelling of the streams over the holms and mea- dows. In the same spots, at the present day, the quantity of snow which usually falls during the win- ter is comparatively small, appears rarely before Christmas, and is gone in February, or early in March. The summer heat is more uniformly distri- buted, seldom amounting to a degree oppressive to the labourer, or protracted to a term injurious to the crops; while the rain which follows is neither so violent in degree, nor so long continued, and hap- pening when the grain is far advanced towards ripeness, the injury which it does is comparatively trifling. This mitigation of the seasons, which is wholly referrible to the progress of cultivation, has had the happiest effect upon the health of the inhabit- ants. D iseases, which formerly paid their periodical visits with distressing regularity, have either been wholly put to flight, or have been deprived of the terrors in which they were clothed ; the supply of INTRODUCTION. 5 food, which rested upon contingencies beyond control or calculation, has been secured with a comparative certainty; and famines, which commonly recurred at periods oniy a few years apart, are now happily un- known, except in some of the very wildest districts, and then only at very distant intervals. We propose, as far as can be accomplished within narrow limits, to trace the progress of our own country towards one of the chief objects and indica- tions of civilization, — that of obtaining an abundance and a variety of wholesome and agreeable vegetable food, at the cheapest rate, and with unfailing regu larity, for increasing inhabitants. This great object is principally accomplished by the natural progress of a people in knowledge and industry. It is ad- vanced by good commercial laws ; it is retarded by bad. But if the general laws of a country have the effect of rendering industry free and property secure, it will go forward, without the assistance of govern- ments, and in spite of that assistance, too often mis- directed— an embarrassment instead of a help. As we trace this advance of civilization, we first find that famines, once the unfailing scourges of a country, occur at longer and longer intervals, till at last they disappear altogether. We next perceive that sea- sons of scarcity, producing much severe misery, though not to be compared in their desolating effects to famines, become also fewer and fewer. Lastly, we discover that, though the great necessary of life, bread, may be dearer in one year than in another, the fluctuations in price are seldom extreme and never sudden. If we investigate the causes of these remarkable circumstances, which always attend a very advanced state of society, we shall find that they are not to be ascribed to the vigilance of the soundest legislation, or to the provident foresight of the wisest ministers ; but to the spirit of commerce, b 3 6 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. pursuing; its natural course without interference from the cumbrous aid of a government, or the opposing prejudices of a people. When a nation has become accustomed to the best food, instead of habitually resorting to the lowest, which it can only do by its steady but certain progress in industry and a taste for comforts ; — when the intercourse between all parts of a country is certain and rapid ; — when large capitals may be safely and profitably employed in storing corn in seasons of abundance to meet the exigencies of a season of scarcity ; — when such vege- table productions of other lands, as will endure to be naturalized, can be grown in plenty at every man’s door ; — and, lastly, when foreign commerce places the natural productions of every country within our reach in exchange for our own natural productions, — then, and not till then, can a nation be said to be so advanced in civilization, as to have secured, as far as possible, a constant supply of the best vegetable food that the earth can furnish, at a price accessible to the great mass of consumers. The particular circumstances which advance or re- tard this desirable end, will be (as far as may be done without touching upon disputable points) brought out in the following pages. The general subject will embrace a history of the vegetable food of our people, as dependent upon agriculture, gardening, commerce ; and that history will be illustrated by notices of the food of other great bodies of mankind. The subject will necessarily involve a few details of vegetable physiology, and of practical agriculture and horticulture ; but it must be evident, that any scientific description of the structure of plants, how- ever interesting, would be as much out of place here, as any minute accounts of farming and gardening processes. Our desire is to excite atten- tion to some of those ordinary circumstances in the INTRODUCTION. 7 condition of mankind which hgve such powerful effects upon the advance of the world in knowledge and happiness. In this point of view, a blade of wheat, a potato, or a peppercorn, may each be made a theme to direct the attention to some of the most important causes of the prosperity of nations ; and the result of such observation and inquiry must necessarily be a conviction, that all human interests are strictly allied, and that the great mutual neces- sities which bind mankind together are steadily going forward to break down the barriers which separate classes and nations, and to diffuse know- ledge, and plenty the fruit of knowledge, over all the earth. In the study, then, of this subject, all who are en- gaged in the culture of the soil, whether the wealthy proprietor who draws from his estates a lordly re- venue, the farmer who earns from his fields an independent subsistence, or the peasant whose toil obtains from the little nook which joins his cottage a wholesome meal for his family, may draw from the pursuit the means of mental improvement. Those, too, whose callings or professions shut them out from the contemplation of rural objects, may derive both pleasure and advantage from knowing by what care a grain of wheat is elaborated into the material of a loaf of bread, and how that loaf is supplied with regularity both at seed-time and at harvest. Lastly, each and all may, with equal profit, acquire some information concerning that almost countless number of foreign productions, which commerce has brought to form a part of the daily food and comfort of almost the hum Jest of our fellow-citizens. Does it not in fact appear natural, it might almost be said inevitable, that every one should feel an interest in prosecuting inquiries as to things to which he is in- debted for so many of his daily comforts and enjoy* 8 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. merits — bow they are produced, whence they are brought, and by what exertions their appearance at his board has been accomplished ? It is not entirely in relation to their uses that a knowledge of vegetable productions will be at- tempted to be conveyed in the following pages. Circumstances attend the growth of many even among the plants most familiar to us, which need only to be observed to insure our admiration, and these will be incidentally pointed out. The seed of a globe-turnip is exceedingly minute — not larger perhaps than the twentieth part of an inch in dia- meter ; and yet in the course of a few short months this seed will be elaborated by the soil and the at- mosphere into a solid bulb of matter containing, in some cases, twenty-seven millions of times the bulk of the seed, and this in addition to a considerable bunch of leaves. We cannot, in any case, indeed, open a page in the great volume of Nature that is not calculated to excite our highest admiration ; that, if read aright, must not incite us onward to the study of her works ; or which can fail to raise our grateful hearts towards the Supreme Author of every good. THE CERE A LI A, 9 Chapter I. THE CEREALIA, OR CORN-PLANTS, GENERALLY. All vegetable productions which afford food, con- tain, in some proportion or other, a farinaceous* or non-fibrous and granular substance, which, when dried, may be ground or pounded into flour or meal, and which, if boiled in water, will form with it a pulpy substance. This farinaceous constituent of esculent vegetables, the presence of which in some portion appears necessary to the growth of all plants, and which is in perfection only when the plant, of which it forms a part, has attained maturity, has less of an organized structure than is discernible in the membranous and fibrous portions of vegetable growth. In regard to its consistency, this farinaceous principle is found to take a wide range, existing sometimes in the form of an almost limpid fluid, and thence through different degrees of acquiring con- sistency, called inspissation, until, in some cases, its hardness approaches to that of woody fibre. Those vegetable substances which contain the largest proportion of farinaceous matter, are on that account the best adapted for human food. Of this kind are seeds and tubers j-, when they are ripe, or have attained their full growth. Many plants yielding these are annuals : others, with the exception of their seeds or tubers, die in the autumn, and leave these # From farina , meal. + A tuber is an underground stem, distended by the deposit of farinaceous matter. 10 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. as the sources of their reproduction in the following year. Tubers, equally with seeds, may be considered as store-houses of nutriment for the sustenance of the germ in the early stages of its growth, before its roots and leaves are expanded, and it has thence become capable of assimilating other substances for its own nutrition. Such parts of the plants which answer best for adoption as the substantive food of man, are thus living vegetables in a dormant state ; and the moment that the germ which they contain has begun to vegetate, they undergo a change both in regard to their taste and nutritive qualities, and become less qualified for affording nourishment to man. Farinaceous seeds are divided into two classes : the first of these are the seeds of annual plants, which are the true grasses, or plants of similar properties. They are styled the cerealia* — corn plants, or grain-bearing plants. That one among them upon which any people depends chiefly for its food, is called by that people corn ; as wheat in England, oats in the northern lowlands of Scot- land, rye in the sandy districts on the southern shores of the Baltic Sea, and maize throughout the United States of America. The second division of farinaceous seeds is also yielded by plants which for the most part are of annual growth, and these seeds being contained in pods or legumes, such plants are styled leguminous or podded : they are likewise known by the generic name of pulse. The corn plants are all annuals, both in their stems and roots, the whole plant dying after the seed has fully formed and ripened, and sometimes even before the latter process has been perfectly accomplished. * From Ceres, the goddess of Corn. THE CEREALIA. 11 They all send up a straw or culm, which is hollow, and divided into lengths by nodes or joints ; and at these joints the leaves have their insertion, one at each joint on the alternate sides of the stein ; each leaf embraces the stem for some length in the manner of a sheath. It is worthy of remark that these stems always contain a portion of silex, or earth of flint, in a state of very minute division — from which circum- stance their ashes are found useful in imparting a polish to articles formed of wood, horn, ivory, or some of the softer metals ; while, on the other hand, the presence of this material, and the great difficulty attending its separation from the purely vegetable matter, have always offered obstacles to the em- ployment of straw for the manufacture of paper. The last leaf of the season performs the office of a sheath to the newly-formed flower, embracing it for a time so firmly, that the sheath cannot be opened without difficulty. With the growth of the flower it bursts open its protecting spatha or sheath, rises above it, and the leaf then turns backward. The head or ear consists of an uncertain number of flowers, followed by seeds. These are sometimes placed upon a single rib or rachis, as in wheat and barley, and they then form a spike. In the variety called Egyptian wheat this spike is compound, there being more than one rachis ; if this consists of branches that are naked at their points of junction, and have spikelets at their extremities, they form what is called a panicle : this is the case, for example, with oats. The chief corn-plants, or cerealia, are wheat, rye, barley, oats, millet, rice, and maize. The tribe of cereal grasses is not restricted to these seven varie- ties, but includes numerous others, which, if they are not equally employed as food, are neglected only on account of the smallness of their seeds. “ None are 12 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. unwholesome in their natural state, with the single exception of Lolium temulentum (darnel), a common weed in many parts of England, the effects of which are undoubtedly deleterious, although perhaps much exaggerated. In this respect an approach seems to be naturally made to the properties of half-putrid wheat, which are known to be dangerous*.” The presence of the corn-plants in any region of the earth attests that man is there, in an advanced stage of civilization. In the sepulchres of the Egyp- tian kings, which were opened by the naturalists and other scientific persons who accompanied the French army to Egypt, was found the common wheat, in vessels which were so perfectly closed, that the grains retained both their form and their colourt- The wheat, buried there for several thousand years, was a proof of the ancient civilization of Egypt, as convincing as the ruins of temples and the inscrip- tions of obelisks. The corn -plants, such as they are found under cultivation, do not grow wild in any part of the earth. Wheat has been traced, indeed, in Persia, springing up in spots very remote from human habitation, and out of the line of the traffic of the natives ; but this circumstance is far from proving that it is a production natural and indige- nous to Persia. In Sicily there is a wild grass called ( Egilops ovata, which is found in particular districts. It has been held that the seeds of this plant may be changed into corn by cultivation ; and that the an- cient worship of Ceres, which considered the fields of Enna and of Trinacria as the cradles of agricul- ture, had its origin in this transformation of the na- © tive grass. Professor Latapie, of Bourdeaux, affirms, * Lindley’s ‘ Introduction to the Natural System of Botany,’ p. 302. f See Lyell’s Geology, vo! ii. p. 81. THE CERE ALIA. 13 that having1 cultivated the seed of the CEvilops , the plant has changed its generic character, and has made approaches to that of wheat*. Sir Joseph Banks, in a paper addressed by him to the Horti- cultural Society, in the year 1805, stated that having received from a lady some packets of seeds, and among them one labelled “ Hill Wheat,” the grains of which were hardly larger than those of our wild grasses, but which, when viewed through a magni- fying lens, were found exactly to resemble wheat, he sowed these grains in his garden, and was much surprised on obtaining, as their produce, a good crop of spring wheat, the grains of which were of the ordinary size. Every inquiry that was made to as- certain the history of these seeds proved fruitless. All that could be established, with regard to the place of their production, was, that they came from India; but as to the particular locality, or the amount of cultivation they had received, or whether the grain was indeed in that instance a spontaneous offering of nature, could not be ascertained. Experiments such as those we have mentioned, may naturally lead us to think, that in the corn-*plants, as in other vegeta- bles, great modifications have been produced by cul- tivation ; but they do not at all interfere with the belief that the cereal grains are spread through the ' earth by the agency of man alone, and that they are bequests from past ages of civilization too remote to afford any materials for the authentic history of their introduction, even into countries possessing the most ancient records. Other seeds are dispersed through- out the earth by winds and currents, in the hairy coats of quadrupeds, and in the maws of birds. But the corn-plants, in common with many other impor- tant vegetable productions, follow the course of man alone. This is a blessing, which even hostile armies * Diet. Classique d’Histoire Nat., Art. CErjilops. C 14 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. are instruments in diffusing. Cortez, the conqueror of Mexico, inhuman as he was in many parts of his conduct, thus writes from Mexico to the King of Spain: — “ All the plants of Spain thrive admirably in this land. We shall not proceed here as we have done in the isles, where we have neglected cultiva- tion, and destroyed the inhabitants. A sad experi- ence ought to render us more prudent. I beseech your Majesty to give orders that no vessel set sail for this country without a certain quantity of plants and grain.” The diffusion of plants useful to man is an accident diminishing the evils of hostile invasion ; — it is a necessary attendant of commercial inter- course. The Indians of New England called the plantain, “ English-man’s foot;” and in the same way, in the infancy of ancient society, wheat might have been similarly regarded as springing from the footsteps of the Persians or the Egyptians. In times approaching nearer to our own, we know that wheat followed the march of the Romans, as the vine was in the train of the Greeks ; and, to come still nearer, we find cotton '■emaining in countries which had otherwise suffered from tire incursions of the Arabs. “ The migration of these plants,” observes Hum- boldt, “ is evident ; but their first country is as little known as that of the different races of men which, from the earliest traditions, have been found in all parts of the globe*.” The manner in which the most important gifts of Providence to mankind have been diffused by the influences of conquest or commerce, has some striking instances in the history of America. In the New World such facts are too recent to admit of any doubt. The same class of facts, too, are exhi- bited in several cases in the history of our empire in Hindostan. We shall give a few examples. * Geographie des Plantes, p. 35. THE CEREALIA. 15 None of the cereal grasses, properly so called, were found in cultivation among the Mexicans when their country was first visited by Europeans. The founda tion of the wheat harvests at Mexico is said to have been three or four grains which a slave of Cortez dis- covered in 1530 accidentally mixed with a quantity of rice. The careful negro who preserved and made so advantageous a use of the few grains which a happy chance had thrown in his way, and which, in the hands of a careless or thoughtless person, would, with their future inestimable advantages, have been lost to his country, has not been thought worthy — doubtless because he was a negro — of having his name preserved. The Spanish lady, Maria d’Escobar, wife of Diego de Chaves, who first imparted the same blessing to Peru, by conveying a few grains of wheat to Lima, has been more fortunate. Her name, to- gether with the means which she took for effecting her object, by carefully distributing the produce of successive harvests as seed among the farmers, have been gratefully preserved in the records of history. The exact period when this cultivation was com- menced in Peru is not, indeed, known ; but it appears reasonable to believe that this event did not occur until after the date assigned for the introduction of wheat into Mexico, as, in the year 1547, wheaten bread was hardly known in the important city of Cuzco. The first grains of wheat which reached Quito were conveyed thither by Father Josse Rixi, a Fleming, who sowed them near the monastery of St. Francis, where the monks still preserve and show, as a precious relic, the rude earthen pot wherein the seeds first reached their establishment. The rice of Carolina is now the principal produce of that portion of North America. Mr. Ashby, an English merchant, at the close of the seventeenth century, sent a hundred weight from China to this 16 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. colony ; and from this source all the subsequent rice harvests of that division of the New World, and the large exportations of the same .valuable grain to Europe, have sprung. The wheat now cultivated in Rohilcund, in India, “ was propagated by seed brought from England, since the conquest, by Mr. Hawkins* and the potato, within a very few years, has been extensively spread by us through the In- dian peninsula, and there, by preventing the exclu- sive use of rice, is greatly ameliorating the condition of the native population. Facts such as these are highly interesting; because they exhibit the moral as well as natural causes which influence the distri- bution of vegetable food throughout the earth. In Jthe following pages we shall endeavour to collect whatever is satisfactorily knowrt as to this branch of our subject. Before we proceed, however, to a par- ticular history of species or varieties of vegetable substances used for the sustenance of man, we shall take a rapid, though necessarily imperfect view, of the distribution of the corn-plants throughout the globe at the present day. Agriculture can be pursued but very partially within the northern polar circles, where, for the most part, the intenseness of the frosts during a protracted winter binds up the soil, — not otherwise sterile, — and condemns it to perpetual unfruitfulness. The utmost limit of the culture of grain in Si- beria reaches only to the sixtieth degree of latitude, and in the more eastern parts of the province these important products are scarcely to be met with higher than fifty-five degrees. In the more southern parts of Siberia, and in districts adjoining the Wolga, the land is extraordinarily fertile, so that crops of grain are obtained with a very trifling amount * Ileber’s Journey, vol. ii. p. 131. THE CEREALIA. 17 of labour. Buck-wheat is very commonly cultivated in this district ; and it is found that one sowing of the seed will produce five or six crops in as many successive years, each harvest yielding from twelve, to fifteen times the quantity first sown. The seed which is shed during the reaping is sufficient to insure the growth of plants for the following year, without any manuring, and with no more labour on the part of the farmer than that of harrowing the land in the spring. This system is continued with- out intermission until the diminished fertility of the soil compels its abandonment ; but, as already men- tioned, this state of things rarely occurs until six years have been thus occupied. It might be thought that in a country thus fertile, the proprietors or cultivators of the soil would speedily become enriched ; this, however, is by no means the case. Facilities for transporting their surplus produce are wretchedly deficient, so that the market is extremely circumscribed ; and the inhabi- tants of the country being generally so poor as to be unable to purchase food produced from grain, the farmers limit their cultivation in a great degree to the quantity needed for the supply of their own families. The small amount of labour called for by this cultivation is usually performed by the farmer himself, assisted by the members of his own family ; the employment of any other farm -labourers is con- sequently rare. All temptation to extend the breadth of culture must be wanting, in a situation where the surplus produce cannot be exchanged, and its value invested in some permanent mode, whereby a larger quantum of human labour may be commanded at any future period. Europe is indebted to Siberia for a particular de- scription of oats, which are ^considered excellent ; c 3 18 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. and at Yakoutch barley is sometimes seen to arrive at maturity. In some districts of Lapland, situated to the westward, the inhabitants are, by dint of careful tillage, enabled to produce plentiful crops of rye. In some spots, nearer even than this to the pole, potatoes are made to supply the place of grain ; but for the most part the inhabitants are constrained to subsist upon dried fish. In Kamtchatka, which is considerably to the south of Siberia, extending from 62° to 51° of north latitude, but united with that province at its eastern extremity, no attempts to cultivate the cereal grasses have ever proved successful, the produce not having in any case been sufficient to repay the labour of the tillage. These failures may, however, be attributable more to the generally ungrateful nature of the soil than to the effects of an unkindly climate, since in some spots where the land is of better quality, other esculent vegetables are produced in tolerable perfection ; cabbages, carrots, turnips, radishes, beet-root, and even cucumbers, are raised constantly and without difficulty. Dried fish and caviare form the principal food of the inhabitants of Kamtchatka and the islands of the Aleoutian Archipelago. Barley and oats are the kinds of grain the culture of which extends farthest to the north in Europe. The meal which they yield, and which is seldom or never used by the inhabitants of South Britain for human food, forms, on the contrary, the principal sustenance of the inhabitants of Norway and Sweden, of a part of Siberia, and even of Scotland. Rye follows next in order, being associated with oats and barley in the more northern division of the temperate zone. In the southern parts of Norway and Sweden, in Denmark, in districts bordering on the Baltic Sea, and in the north of Germany, rye THE CEREALIA 19 forms the principal object of cultivation ; barley bein'? raised in those countries, as with us, only for the purpose of brewing;, and the use of oats being limited principally to the feeding of horses. In all these last-mentioned places, wheat is also grown; but its consumption is limited, and the principal part is made an object of external trade. The winters of Norway are intensely cold, but their summers are, on the contrary, excessively warm, particularly in the vallies, upon which the rays of the sun are reverberated during the day from the moun- tains, while the atmosphere has no time for becoming cool during the few hours when the sun is below the horizon. In such situations barley is generally sown and reaped within the short space of sixty days; sometimes even six weeks are found to suffice for fulfilling the hopes of the husbandman. The Nor- wegian agriculturist is, however, occasionally visited by seasons, throughout which the sun appears to lose its genial power, and vegetation is stunted ; blossoms, indeed, appear, but are unsucceeded by •fruits, and the straw yields nothing but empty ears. This calamity is happily of rare occurrence ; and, unless when checked by a premature frost, the har- vests of Norway are for the most part abundant and excellent. Agriculture is pursued systematically and even scientifically in Sweden, by which means the pre- vailing barrenness of the soil is partially remedied. The province of Gothland is made to produce barley, oats, rye, and wheat, as well as pease and beans. In these climates, the transition of the seasons is always abrupt. Vegetation, when it has once commenced, proceeds with a rapidity unknown in these more temperate regions ; and the interval which elapses between committing the seed to the soil and gathering 20 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. the ripened harvest, is scarcely greater in Sweden than is experienced in Norway. Somewhat farther to the south, rye in a great measure disappears, and wheat becomes the principal material used for human food. France, England, the southern part of Scotland, part of Germany and Hungary, and the lands of Western and Middle Asia, fall within this description. In most of these countries the vine is also successfully cultivated ; and wine forming a substitute for beer, the raising of barley is consequently much neglected. Still farther southward, wheat is found in abun- dance, but maize and rice are also produced, and enter largely among the constituents of human food. Por- tugal and Spain, that part of France which borders on the Mediterranean Sea, Italy, and Greece, are thus circumstanced. Still farther to the east, in Persia and Northern India, Arabia, Nubia, Egypt, and Barbary, wheat is indeed found ; but maize, rice, and millet form the principal materials for human sustenance. On the plains near the Caspian Sea, in the province of Georgia, rice, wheat, barley, and millet are raised abundantly, and with very little culture. In the more elevated parts of those districts rye is sometimes cultivated, but oats entirely disappear, the mules and horses being fed on barley. The mode of culture followed at the present day in Egypt is exceedingly simple, and calls but for a small amount of labour. All that is required for raising barley and wheat, is, when the inundations of the Nile have subsided, to throw the seed upon the mud ; if this should be thought too hard and stiff, the grain is lightly ploughed in, and no farther care or culture is then required until the ripening of the produce, which usually happens from ihe begin- ning to the end of April. THE CEREAL1A. 21 In Nubia, and particularly above the Great Ca- taract, the banks of the river are so high as seldom to admit of the overflowing of the waters, and the Nubian cultivators are consequently obliged to em- ploy sakies , or water-wheels, for the purpose of irri- gating the fields during the summer : this practice prevails as far as Sennaar. Each of these sakies is capable of irrigating as much land as is calculated to yield from twelve to fifteen hundred English bushels of grain, and employs the alternate labour of eight or ten cows. The water thus dispensed over the land is thrown up either from the Nile, or from pits dug to the depth of fifteen or twenty feet, in which an abundant supply is soon collected. The principal vegetable productions of Nubia are barley and dhourra (Sorghum, or Indian millet). The use of wheat is confined to the more wealthy inhabitants. The grains which form the principal objects of cultivation in our division of the globe are rarely seen in China and Japan, where rice greatly predo- minates. The reason for this is not to be sought in the influence of climate, but rather in the peculiar manners and tastes of the people ; since, throughout the isles of Japan, and in a very considerable part of the Chinese empire, every one of those grains might be successfully reared. The denseness of population in China furnishes a sufficient reason why the pur- suit of agriculture should be so much encouraged as it is by the government. The annals of that singular people acquaint us, that one of their emperors who enjoyed the highest reputation for wisdom was taken from the plough to sit upon the throne. Another has been celebrated for having; discovered the art of draining low lands, of collecting the water in canals, and of converting it from a noxious impediment to the useful purpose of irrigation. Their emperor, Ven-ti, who reigned 179 years before Christ, is said 22 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. to have incited his subjects to the more zealous culti- vation Df their lands, by ploughing with his own hands the land surrounding his palace, which example being followed by his ministers and courtiers, influ- enced in turn those who moved in a less exalted sphere*. Of the countries which lie between the tropics, those of Asia adopt principally the use of rice, while maize is made the common food of the Americans. There exists a natural reason for this distribution, Asia being undoubtedly the native region of rice, while maize is as certainly the production of America. In Africa, except as already particularized, and in the British settlements of that continent, the two grains are used indifferently and in nearly equal proportions. Wheat is found in some situations within the tro- pics ; but its high price, as compared with that of other grains, occasions its use to be confined to the more wealthy classes. In many parts of British India, and particularly in the upper provinces, the quality of the wheat is represented as being excellent, although the grain is smaller than with us. Barley is likewise grown in some of the more northern dis- tricts, but the grain does not attain to the same size or plumpness as in Europe. The variety cultivated in India is that known by us under the name of B igg : its cheapness causes it, however, to be extensively used by the native population, who eat it in the form of cakes. The agriculture of the Hindu Ryots is of the very rudest description : their ploughs are scarcely de- serving of the name, having no contrivance for turning over the soil; the instrument employed as a harrow is nothing more than the branch of a * Du Halde, Nouvelle relation de la Chine, tome i. pp. 274-5. THE CEREALIA. 23 tree, or, at best, is only a wooden frame sixteen or eighteen feet long1, in the form of a ladder, which is drawn by four oxen, and driven by two men, who add to its effectiveness by standing upon the instru- ment. Dr. Buchanan, in the account of his ‘ J ourney through Mysore, Canara, and Malabar,’ closes a very disparaging account of Indian husbandry with the following remarks: — “ I am afraid, however, that the reader, in perusing the foregoing accounts, will have formed an opinion of the native agriculture still more favourable than it deserves. I have been obliged to use the English words ploughings, weedings, and hoeings, to ex- press operations somewhat similar that are performed by the natives ; and the frequent repetitions of these, mentioned in the accounts taken from the cultivators, might induce the reader to imagine that the ground was well wrought, and kept remarkably clean. Quite the reverse, however, is the truth. Owing to the extreme imperfection of their implements, and want of strength in their cattle, a field, after six or eight ploughings, has numerous small bushes remaining as upright in it as before the labour, while the plough has not penetrated above three inches deep. The plough has neither coulter nor mould-board to divide and to turn over the soil, and the handle gives the ploughman very little power to command its direc- tion. The other instruments are equally imperfect, and are more rudely formed than it was possible for my draughtsman to represent*.” The only circumstance which is stated favourable to the agricultural skill of the Hindus, is the existence of contrivances for irrigating the lands in seasons of drought. This process is effected by means of tanks, which are maintained under the compulsory * Vol, i. p. 126. 24 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. regulations of the governments, whose revenues depend upon the produce of the soil. It remains to trace the distribution of the Cerealia throughout America. The highest limit for the cul- tivation of these plants on that vast continent is in the more southern portion of the Russian possessions, situated between 57° and 58° of north latitude, where barley and rye are brought to maturity. On the more eastern coast of America, the same cultivation rarely succeeds higher than 50° or 51°. In the United States, wheat and rye grow as in the more temperate regions in Europe ; and it is perhaps owing to faulty methods of tillage, occasioned by the great abundance of land and the dearness of labour, that the produce bears a small proportion when compared with that obtained from cultivating the same extent of land in Europe. Great improve- ments in this respect have already been introduced; and when population shall be found, as in older settled countries, pressing against the means of subsistence, there is no reason why the lands should not be made as productive generally, as they are in the carefully- cultivated districts of this country. Maize is very extensively raised in the United States, and in the southern parts of the Union rice is also very largely cultivated. Canada produces wheat in sufficient abundance to supply its own population, and to make large occa- sional shipments to the mother-country, where this produce is received upon more advantageous terms as regards the duty payable on importation, than wheat the produce of any part of the continent of Europe. In proportion as the lands of Canada are cleared of their timber, we may expect that a larger amount of grain will be spared by that province for consumption in Europe; unless the tide of emigration THE CEREALIA. 25 should continue to set more and more strongly towards that quarter, so as to call for a proportionately in- creased quantity of grain for the sustenance of the settlers. Humboldt, in his account of New Spain, has given a very interesting view of the agriculture of South America. In the lower latitudes of the Mex- ican republic, the cereal grains of Europe, compre- hending under this denomination wheat, barley, oats, and rye, are never cultivated at a lower elevation than from 2500 to 3000 feet above the level of the sea. It is well known that the habitation of plants is determined, in a very decided manner, by the elevation of different regions. On this subject De Candolle calculates, that in France every five hun- dred and forty feet of vertical elevation is equivalent to a receding of one degree from the equator ; while Humboldt estimates every rise of three hundred and ninety-six feet to be equal to the same advance to the north, in tropical countries. We know that the summits of the towering Andes — some of which are placed almost directly under the equatorial line — are yet covered with perpetual snow ; and that in many mountainous countries within the tropics, the seeds and fruits of temperate regions are seen to flourish. On the declivity of the Cordilleras, between Vera Cruz and Acapulco, wheat cultivation does not in general commence at a lower level than 4000 feet. Sometimes, as in the immediate vicinity of the city of Xalapa, wheat is sown, not for the sake of the grain, which indeed it there never produces, but be- cause the straw and succulent leaves furnish excellent fodder for cattle. It does not appear, however, that the degree of latitude and the amount of elevation are the only cir- cumstances that determinethe fructification of wheat, since in Guatemala, which is nearer to tne equator, D 26 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. and at a much lower level than Xalapa, that grain comes to full perfection. Humboldt offers, as rea- sons for this variance from the usual rule, the ex- posed situation of the district, and the prevalence of cool winds, which serve to modify the otherwise un- favourable influence of the climate. “ I have seen,” says this observant traveller, “ in the province of Caraccas, the finest harvests of wheat near Victoria, (latitude 10° 13') at 500 or 600 metres (1640 or 1968 feet) of absolute elevation ; and it appears that the wheaten fields which surround the Quatro Villas , ill the island of Cuba (latitude 21° 58'), have still a smaller elevation. At the Isle of France (latitude 20° 10') wheat is cultivated on a soil almost level with the ocean Circumstances altogether unconnected with cli- mate must be taken into account in determining the relative agricultural capabilities of Mexico, where the absolute absence of rain, throughout a large portion of the time when the plant is on the ground, must be, in a high degree, detrimental to wheat husbandry, unless artificial means were re- sorted to, as in Nubia, for supplying the natural deficiency of moisture. Throughout a great part of the temperate regions of New Spain the farmers are compelled to adopt the system of artificial irrigation. This is effected by the agency of canals and reservoirs, which are supplied from the rivers, and which are so constructed that the water may be dispensed at plea- sure over any and every part of the farms. In districts where the system of artificial watering is fully adopted, the fertility of the Mexican farms is extraordinary, — far beyond anything experienced in the richest soils of Europe, the wheat harvest being commonly thirty-five and forty for one, and some considerable estates yielding even fifty and sixty * Humboldt’s New Spain, p. 454. THE CEREALIA. 27 measures for one measure of seed. In similar lo- calities, and with land of equal quality, but where no opportunity has been provided for watering- the fields, the annual return does not exceed more than fifteen or twenty for one. Maize is also very extensively cultivated in Mexico ; and, from the genial nature of the climate, and the general fertility of the soil, the returns which it yields to the farmer are most abundant. Humboldt in- forms us that in the valley of Mexico the maize har- vest yields two hundred for one. The Indians and Mestizoes, who form a large proportion of the inha- bitants of the republic, feed on maize and manihot (cassava), the consumption of wheat being princi- pally confined to the white inhabitants of the towns. In the temperate and polar districts of the southern hemisphere, the order of cultivation is very similar to that pursued in similar latitudes and elevations north of the tropics. In America wheat is com- monly found in the southern provinces of Brazil, in Buenos Ayres, and in Chili. The same grain pre- dominates at the Cape of Good Hope, the flour which it yields being of beautiful quality, and accompanied by less than the usual proportion of bran. In Australia wheat also forms the principal object of cultivation on the part of the settlers ; but, in the southernmost portions of that vast island — which, perhaps, it were more correct to call a continent — and in Van Die- men’s Land, barley and rye are likewise to be found. 28 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES, Chapter II. WHEAT. By common consent, and in every climate where it can be cultivated, Wheat — Triticvm — is held in the highest estimation of all the cereal grains. The cost of its production, compared with that of some other substantive articles of aliment, does, indeed, occasion it to be but little consumed in countries where the bulk of the inhabitants are constrained by poverty to subsist upon the cheapest description of food that will sustain life. Where, however, the people are in a situation which enables them to in- dulge their choice in respect of food, wheaten bread, with scarcely an exception, constitutes the chief ma- terial for consumption. A full-grown and perfect grain of wheat will, on examination, be found to resemble the above figures. In form, it is a compressed oval, and is inclosed firstly in certain chaffy scales, which are readily to be separated from it, and secondly in a membranous tunic, which invests the seed much more closely. Along that side of the grain which, while the plant was growing, was turned towards the rachis, a groove may be observed. At the base, on the op- Grain of Wheat, upper and under sides. WHEAT. 29 posite or convex side, is to be seen a small protube- rant oval space, which indicates the germ or embryo of the future plant, and which is at this time co- vered by the tunics. The vessels whereby the grain was attached to the plant, and through which it drew nourishment until its maturity, had their point of attachment at the basal termination of this protu- berance. When the seed is perfectly ripe, the um- bilical vessels separate; the point of separation speedily heals in the same manner as a portion of a deciduous tree from which a matured leaf has de- tached itself, and the grain may then be easily threshed out from the chaff in which it had lain buried ; sometimes, indeed, it sheds itself sponta- neously. Several species, and a still greater number of varieties, of wheat are to be found. Many of these differences are doubtless to be referred to influences of climate and modes of culture. There are but two sorts generally and extensively cultivated in this kingdom, and these have distinguishing names given to them, in agreement with the seasons in which they are sown, one being called Spring or Summer Wheat, the other Winter or Lammas Wheat Spring, or Summer Wheat — Triticum (Estivum — is supposed to be a native of Siberia, in the land of the Beschkirs. It is less hardy than the winter- sown kind, and the whole plant has a weaker ap- pearance ; the stem is thin and delicate, the ear more slender and less erect, and it is provided with much longer beards or awns. This description of grain, which, in our uncertain climate, cannot be safely or productively cultivated throughout the king- dom, is yet domesticated in the more southerly and the midland districts. As its grain is smaller than that of the commoner sort, and as its produce is less abundant, the farmer would not be led to its culti d 3 30 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. vation, could he be certain of success with earlier sown seed, or if, in the progress of his agricultural operations, the land could always be got ready for the autumnal sowing. Ear and PlaDt of Spring Wheat. The principal advantage to be derived from the adoption of summer wheat consists in the security which it offers against the injurious effects of a cold and rainy spring ; so that in situations and seasons where winter-sown wheat is so far injured as to destroy all prospect of a harvest, this delicate but more rapidly growing species may be more confi- dently depended on for yielding its increase. Some farmers, when they perceive that the seed they have sown in autumn fails and goes off in patches from any untoward causes, are accustomed to rake spring WHEAT. 31 wheat, into the vacant spaces, and wherever the plants appear weak and thin. By this means the uniformity of the crop is restored; and if the opera- tion has not been delayed beyond the beginning of April, the spring wheat will be matured and ready for the sickle at the same time with the earlier sown plants. This mixture of grain is of no consequence to the miller, but it would be manifestly improper to employ the produce as seed. When spring wheat is sown by itself, the season for this operation is in April, or the early part of May, from which time onward the farmer has but little to dread from any severity of weather in the above-mentioned districts. It is said that this species of wheat is not subject to blight. According to the analysis of Sir Humphrey Davy, the nutritive quality of this kind is not quite equal to that of winter wheat, the proportions being 95^ per cent, in the latter, and only 94 per cent, in the former, of the entire bulk of the grains. The gluten contained in the two kinds varies in a greater degree, that of winter wheat being 24, while that of spring-sown corn is only 19, so that the winter va- riety is most eligible for the purpose of the baker. Winter, or Lammas Wheat — Triticum hyber- nvm — may easily be distinguished by its appearance, being much more vigorous in the stem, more erect and thick in the ear, and, in comparison with the other, destitute of beard or awn, for which reason its bloom is more conspicuous. The same cause may be cited to account for the fact, that its pollen is both more easily diffused and more liable to be de- stroyed. 4 his plant is sown in autumn, stands through the winter, and ripens its seed in the following summer. Slight varieties of this species are exceedingly com- mon in different localities, and are probably attribut- VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. Ear and Plant of Winter Wheat. able to some peculiarities in the mode of culture. The common varieties of winter wheat are distin- guished from each other according to the colour of the tunic enveloping the grain, and the difference observable in their chaff. The colours are usually divided into white and red, the latter of these in- cluding many different shades of brown. Red wheat is commonly said to be more hardy than white ; it is therefore thought better suited for cultivation in bleak and upland districts. The plant is, however, not so productive as the white, and the flour which it yields is seldom of so desirable a quality. The cultivation of another description of wheat, called, from the form of the ear, the Duck-bill, or WHEAT. 33 Ear and Plant of Duck-bill Wheat. Conical Wheat — Triticum turgidum , — has been attempted in England, but without any profitable result, having no qualities that recommend it to the notice of the agriculturist. Some other varieties exist, which, although they do not appear to be well adapted to the climate of England, are yet cultivated extensively elsewhere; they are therefore deserving of description. Egyptian, or many- spiked Wheat — Triticum comyositum , — called also the Corn of Abundance. This species is principally cultivated in the country whose name it bears, and in Italy. It is probably a native of the north of Africa, and resembles spring wheat, in its habits, more than any other description. 34 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. Ear and Plant of Egyptian, or many-spiked Wheat. The ear is bearded, and the grains are thinner than those of winter wheat. It is the distinctive peculiarity of this plant that its rachis is branched, so that the ear is made up of several spikelets. Egyptian wheat will bear great degrees of heat and drought without injury, so that it is found to yield abundantly in situations where other kinds would be greatly injured, if not destroyed — a circumstance which points it out as admirably adapted to the arid lands whereon it is chiefly cultivated. Polish Wheat — Triticum polonicum. — This va- riety was partially cultivated in England n the latter part of the seventeenth century, but is now to be found here only in botanic gardens. WHEAT. 35 Ear and Plant of Polish Wheat. Spelt Wheat — Triticum spelta — is imagined to have been the Triticum of the Romans, and the Zea of the Greeks, although this latter name has now been given to Maize, a grain unknown to the ancients. This variety is still very abundantly cultivated in many parts of the Continent, and parti- cularly in the south of Europe. It may be raised upon much coarser soil than is required for the better kinds of wheat in England, and calls for much less culture. In many parts of Germany, in Switzerland, in the south of France, in the north of Africa, and at the Cape of Good Hope, spelt is grown abundantly. This is likewise the case in Spain, where, on occa- sions when barley is scarce, this grain is given to 36 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. horses. It is said that spelt wheat is better adapted than any of the more delicate kinds for culture in Australia, and probably it would be found the pre- ferable sort in all the more southern wheat-r,-rowinnr countries. Ear and Plant of Spel t Wheat. There are two distinct varieties of spelt, distin- guished as the awned and the awnless ; the latter is perhaps the most naked of all the cerealia. The grains of this are large, but the ear contains only a small number of them, as a portion of the flowers prove barren. It is generally, if not always, a spring- sown crop ; grows strongly, and its stalks are nearly solid. Bread made of its flour is said to be of a dry quality. WHEAT. 3? Ear and Plant of One-seeded Wheat. One-seeded Wheat, or St. Peter’s corn, — Tri- ticum monococcum. This is another variety ; the stem and leaves of which are among the most dimi- nutive of the species, and the spike contains only a single row of grains. This kind is chiefly used in the mountainous parts of Switzerland, and containing less of gluten than common sorts, it answers better for being boiled into gruel, than for being baked into bread. The four-sided form of the ripe ear is so ex- tremely regular, that it has the appearance of being carved in ivory. The straw, which is both hard and firm, is excellent for thatching. The well-known method of propagating wheat is by sowing the grain in land previously prepared for E UNIVERSITY LIBRARY LEEDS * 39 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. its reception by ploughing. It has been held that this important preliminary of pulverizing the soil can hardly be carried to excess, the expense attending it forming almost the only limit to its prosecution. Cato the censor, who, in addition to his accomplish- ments as a warrior and a statesman, showed an in- timate acquaintance with rural economy, has recorded his opinion on the necessity of thoroughly turning up the soil. In his treatise, ‘ De re rustica ,’ he has laid it down as the first rule in husbandry to plough well, and the second rule — to plough *. Two distinct practices are followed in committing the seed to the earth. The most ancient and most commonly used of these is that of scattering the seed from the hand of the sower over the whole surface ; and this is characteristically called sowing broad-cast. The other method, which is comparatively of modern introduction, is that of depositing the seed in holes formed in straight furrows, and at regular intervals, which is called drilling , or dibbling ; while the pro- cesses which accompany it, and which are impracti- cable with the broad-cast method, are distinguished as the horse-hoeing or drill system of husbandry. Lord Bacon says, that, in his time (the beginning of the seventeenth century), attempts had been made to plant wheat, but that the plan was abandoned, although undoubtedly advantageous, as involving too much labour f. In 1669, Evelyn furnished to the Royal Society a description of a sowing ma- chine invented by Locatelli, an Italian, who had ob- tained a patent for its use in Spain, having proved its utility by public experiment {. The drill plough was, however, not used in England, and was, perhaps, quite unknown to a body of men who are proverbially * Cap. Ixi. t Sylva Sylvarum. I See Beckmann’s ‘ History of Inventions,’ vol. iv. p. 45, ed 1817. WHEAT. 39 slow all over the world to adopt any improvement till public attention was awakened to it, in the early part of the last century, by the celebrated Jethro Tull, who, after practically following for some years his own improved plan of husbandry, and thereby proving* its advantages, published a particu- lar account of his process in the year 1733. This work, which he entitled ‘ An Essay on Horse- hoeing Husbandry,’ became highly popular, com- pelling the attention of English agriculturists to the subject, and engaging no less the consideration of scientific foreigners. The system of Mr. Tull con- sisted in discarding the old method of scattering seed upon the land broad-cast, and in substituting a mode of sowing the grain in straight rows or furrows by means of an implement more perfect than Locatelli’s machine, which delivered the seed at proper intervals, and in the exact quantity that was found most beneficial. Spaces of fifty inches breadth were left between the furrows, so that the land could be ploughed or horse-hoed in these intervals at various periods during the growth of the crop, the object of these hoeings being to bring fresh portions of the soil into contact with the fibrous roots of the plants, and thus to render every part in turn available for their nutrition. One material advan- tage that results from the new method of husbandry is the saving which it occasions in seed-corn, and which is said to amount to five-eighths of the quan- tity usually expended in the old method. The com- parative merits of the two plans have for so long a time been submitted to the surest of all tests, that of experience, and have been so well examined by competent persons, who have given the result o\ their inquiries to the world, that it cannot be neces- sary to do more in this place than refer the reader to those authors for farther information 40 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. The manner in which plants are produced through the germination of seeds is so well known, that in any community where the human mind has been advanced in that degree which incites to the cultiva- tion of the earth, it would perhaps be difficult- to find a man so insensible to the workings of nature by which he is surrounded, as not to have noticed with admi- ration the phenomena accompanying the develope- ment of vegetable fecundity. It is true we know not how this standing miracle is brought about ; and, in all human probability, we never shall be able to pierce the veil wherein the inciting energy is shrouded to which that fecundity is owing ; but is it possible for us, while conscious that it exists, not to be grateful for the benevolence whereby that energy is ceaselessly called into action? At one end of the groove, in a grain of wheat, is a small protuberance, as we have already mentioned, which is the germ or embryo of the future plant. This organ has been appropriately called corculum (little-heart). It contains within itself a principle, which, if rightly managed, is ca- pable of evolving not only a plant of wheat, with its abundant spike, but also plant after plant, and spike after spike, until, in the course of a few har- vests, the progeny of this little germ would become capable of feeding a nation. Thus it is, that in the lapse of ages, amidst the desolations of rude con- querors, and the alternations which the finest portions of the earth have endured from civilization to semi- barbarism, the vital principle of vegetable life des- tined for the chief support of the human race has not been lost ; and it has remained to man, like fire, which he alone of all animals has subjected to his use, to be called forth at his bidding to administer to his support, his comfort, and his advance in every art of social existence. The number of stalks thrown up by one grain of WHEAT. 41 wheat is indefinite, and depends upon local causes. This power of multiplication, as possessed by the grain-bearing- plants, is called tillering. In its pro- gress, the stalks do not rise immediately from the germ, but are thrown out from different points of the infant sprouts while yet they remain in contact with the moist soil. An increase of the cereal plants, by this means, is sometimes produced beyond anything conceivable by those persons who have not attended to the fact. But for it, the casualties to which these important plants are liable during the earlier stages of vegetation, would in many cases operate fatally to the hopes of the farmer. One or two circumstances may be mentioned in which thispowerof multiplyingthem- selves at the roots is of the highest advantage in the cultivation of the cereal grains. An insect — musca pumilionis — is accustomed to deposit its eggs in the very core of the plumule or primary shoot of wheat, so that it is completely destroyed by the larvae. Whoat-fly ( Musca pumilionis'), in its different stages. E 3 42 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. Did the plant possess within itself no means of re- pairing this injury, the whole previous labour of the husbandman would in this case have been in vain. But this destruction occurring in the spring of the year, when the vegetative power of the plant is in the greatest activity, an effect is produced somewhat analogous to that of heading down a fruit-tree ; shoots immediately spring up from the nodes (knots), the plant becomes more firmly rooted, and produces, probably, a dozen stems and ears where, but for the temporary mischief, it might have sent forth only one. Several extraordinary facts have been recorded in connexion with the inherent power of multiplication possessed by these vegetables. Among others, Sir Kenelm Digby asserted, in 1660, that “ there was in the possession of the Fathers of the Christian doc- trine at Paris, a plant of barley which they at that time kept as a curiosity, and which consisted of two hundred and forty-nine stalks springing from one root or grain, and in which they counted above eighteen thousand grains or seeds of barley.” In the Philosophical Transactions* it is recorded, that Mr. C. Miller of Cambridge, the son of the eminent horti- culturist, sowed, on the 2nd of June, a few grains of common red wheat, one of the plants from which had tillered so much, that on the 8th of August he was enabled to divide it into eighteen plants, all of which were placed separately in the ground. In the course of September and October so many of these plants had again multiplied their stalks, that the number of plants which were separately set out to stand the winter was sixty-seven. With the first growth of the spring the tillering again went forward, so that at the end of March and beginning of April a farther division was made, and the number of plants now amounted to five hundred. Mr. Miller expressed his opinion, * Vol. lviii. 3 WHEAT. 43 that before the season had too far advanced one other division might have been effected, when the number might have been at least quadrupled. The five hundred plants proved extremely vigorous, much more so than wheat under ordinary culture, so that the number of ears submitted to the sickle was 21,109, or more than forty to each of the divided plants : in some instances there were one hundred ears upon one plant. The ears were remarkably fine, some being six or seven inches long, and con- taining from sixty to seventy grains. The wheat, when separated from the straw, weighed forty- seven pounds and seven ounces, and measured three pecks and three-quarters, the estimated number of grains being 57 6,840. Such an enormous increase is not of courfee attain- able on any great scale, or by the common modes of culture; but the experiment is of use as showing’ the vast power of increase with which the most va- luable of vegetables is endowed, and which, by judi- ciously varying the mode of tillage, may possibly in time be brought into beneficial action. The ordinary produce of wheat varies exceedingly, depending much upon the quality of the soil, the nature of the season, and the mode of culture. The average produce of the soil of a country depends, as does every other species of production, upon the ad- vance of its inhabitants in knowledge and in the pos- session of capital. It has been conjectured, that in the 13th century, an acre of good land in England would produce twelve bushels of wheat *. In two centuries this rate of produce appears to have greatly increased. Harrison, writing in 1574, says, “ The yield of our corne-ground is much after this rate following : — Throughout the land (if you please to * Sir J. Cullum’s ‘ History of Hawksted,’ quoted in Eden’s ‘ History of the Poor/ vol. i. p. 18. 44 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. make an estimate thereof by the acre), in meane and indifferent years, wherein each acre of rie or wheat, well tilled and dressed, will yield commonlie sixteene or twentie bushels ; an acre of barley, six-and-thirtie bushels ; of otes, and such like, four or five quar- ters ; which proportion is notwithstanding oft abated toward the north, as it is oftentimes surmounted in the south*.” The mean produce in Great Britain, according’ to the estimate of Mr. Arthur Young, did not, at the time when he wrote (about 50 years ago), exceed twenty-two and a half bushels per acre. Other and later writers have calculated the average at from twenty-four to twenty-eight bushels; while the author of the Reports on Agriculture for Middlesex has asserted, that the medium quantity in that county is forty bushels, the highest produce he has known being sixty-eight, and the lowest twelve bushels per acre. The land in the county which was the subject of these Reports, owing to its proximity to the metropolis, may be considered as in a state of high condition, and much beyond the ordi- nary rate of fertility. At all times, and in every country, some situations will be found more prolific than others, and some individuals will be more suc- cessful in their agricultural labours. Pliny has re- lated a case which occurred among the Romans, where this success was seen in so marked a degree, that the able agriculturist who, by excelling his countrymen, had rendered himself the object of envy, was cited before the Curule Edile and an assembly of the people, to answer to a charge of sorcery, f ounded on his reaping much larger crops from his very small spot of ground than his neighbours did from their extensive fields. “ In answer to this charge Cresinus produced his efficient implements of hus- bandry, his well-fed oxen, and a hale young woman * ‘ Description of Britain/ prefixed to Hnliingshed. / WHEAT. 45 his daughter, and pointing to them, exclaimed, — <■ 4 These, Romans, are my instruments of witchcraft, but [ cannot here show you my labours, sweats, and anxious cares.’ *” It will easily be conceived that the quantity of straw must vary considerably from year to year, ac- cording to the seasons, and that this produce will likewise be generally influenced by the nature of the soil. It is therefore impossible to give any certain information upon this point, but it will perhaps amount to a near approximation to the truth if we consider that for every twelve bushels of wheat, one load, containing thirty-six trusses of straw, will be obtained, the weight of which is II cwt. 2qrs. 8 lbs. The straw of summer wheat is more agreeable to cattle than that produced from winter sowing. This most important vegetable is not wholly free from casualties apart from climate. The principal of these are, blight, mildew, and smut. The examination and treatment of these diseases have proved fruitful topics with writers on agricultural subjects. It does not, however, appear that the public has hitherto benefited much by their speculations, and an author of considerable eminence is so far of a contrary , opinion as to have asserted, that “ in proportion as words have been multiplied upon the subject, the difficulties attending its elucidation have increased t.” Blight is a disotu.cr to which the cereal grains are known to have been liable from the earliest times. Among the ancient Greeks it was regarded as a sign of wrath on the part of their offended deities ; and whenever it occurred they consequently gave them- selves up to the infliction, without any thought of providing a remedy. The same superstitious notion was entertained by the Romans, who believed that * Nut. Hist., book xviii. chap. 6. f Loudon’s Encyclopaedia of Gardening, p. 236. 46 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES the evil, which they called rubigo , was under the control of a particular deity named Rubigus, to propitiate whom in favour of their crops sacrifices were continually offered. Blight and mildew have been very much con- founded together by different writers on agricultural subjects, so as to render it doubtful to which class of appearances each name should in strictness be applied, or whether indeed both are not applicable to one and the same disorder occurring at different periods of the growth of the plant. Wishing to avoid entering upon debateable ground in noticing a subject which remains intricate and obscure, not- withstanding all the laborious treatises to which it has given rise, the forms which the disorders assume, and the bad effects by which they are followed will be plainly but briefly described, leaving the question of their classification to more professional hands. Three distinct and dissimilar causes are assigned for the production of these disorders — cold and frosty winds — sultry and pestilential vapours — and the propagation of a parasitical fungus. The first of these causes acts by stopping the current of the juices; the leaves, being then deprived of a necessary portion of nutriment, speedily wither and die, when the juices, which are impeded in their passage, swell and burst the vessels, becoming then the food of myriads of little insects. These make their appear- ance so suddenly as to have been considered the cause rather than one of the effects of the disease. The second cause of blight occurs after the grain has attained its full growth. It has been observed to happen mostly alter heavy showers of rain, which, occurring about noontide, have been succeeded by clear sunshine. The plants are most commonly attacked thus about the middle or end of July. Mr. Loudon informs us that “in the summer of 1S09, a WHEAT. 47 field of wheat on rather a light and sandy soil came up with every appearance of health, and also into ear, with a fair prospect of ripening well. About the beginning of July it was considered as exceeding* anything expected from such a soil. A week after- wards, a portion of the crop on the east side of the field, to the extent of several acres, was totally de- stroyed, being shrunk and shrivelled up to less than one half the size of what it had formerly been, and so withered and blasted as not to appear to belong to the same field. The rest of the field produced a fair crop*.” This disorder attacks either the leaves or stem of the plant, which appear to be covered by broken lines, of a black or deep brown colour. This disease has been ascertained to result from the presence of a very minute species of fungus, the roots of which are inserted into the stem, and absorb the nourishment intended for the grain, which when the plant is thus attacked proves little else than husk. The minute seeds of the parasitical plant which occasion this mischief are so exceedingly light that they are borne along by the air to considerable distances. They are likewise of extraordinary quick growth, occupying in warm weather, according to the opinion of Sir Joseph Banks, not longer than one week from the time of their insertion in the plant to the production of their seed. Every pore in the straw whereon they fix will present from twenty to forty plants, so that the extent to which this mischief spreads is diffi- cult to be imagined. Fungus thrives best in damp and shady situations, a circumstance which seems to point out naturally the propriety of providing means for the free ventilation of the fields, keeping low the hedges and fences by which they are surrounded. For the same reason it is found that thin crops, and * Encyclop. of Gard. p. 237, 4 8 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. such as are sown by drilling or dibbling, are \. most likely to escape. Com Mildew — Urcdo frumenti — greatly magnified. It has been often asserted, and was for a longtime believed, that the neighbourhood of barberry bushes was hurtful by attracting the noxious fungus, but this idea is now classed among unfounded prejudices. The grain of mildewed plants is found to be per- fectly good for seed, and being smaller than sound grain, a less measure is required for the purpose. Another formidable disease to which corn is liable is known under the characteristic name of smut. This injury consists in the conversion of the farina of the grain into a sooty powder, which is more or WHEAT. 49 less black and offensive to the smell. Some authors have divided this evil under two different names, re- taining that of S7nvt for one of its modifications, while that of burnt-grain has been given to the other. Mills, in his 4 System of Practical Husbandry,’ has drawn the line of distinction between the two in the following terms. “ Smut, properly so called, oc- casions a total loss of the infected ears, but as the black powder which it produces is very fine, and the groins of that powder do not adhere together, wind and rain carry them away, so that the husbandman houses little more than the straw, which does not infect the sound grains and scarcely damages their flour. The burnt or carious grains are, on the con- trary, often housed with the sound grain, which they infect with a contagious distemper, at the same time that they render its flour brown, and give it a bad smell*.” The name under which this disease was known by the Romans was ustilago: by the French farmers it is called charbon. If a portion of the black powder be first wetted with water, and then put under the microscope, it will be found to consist of myriads of minute globules, transparent, and apparently encompassed by a thin membrane. The cause of this disease has been held by some investigators to originate in the soil wherein the grain is sown ; others have attributed it to the growth of a fungus within the ear ; while others again have affirmed that it is owing to a diseased state of the seed whence the plant is produced. The result of various experiments conducted with different seeds sown in the same spot, and subjected to the same culture, appear to confirm the correctness of the last hypothesis. The average weight of a bushel of wheat is about sixty pounds. Inferior samples seldom weigh less * Vol. ii. p. 392. 50 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. than fifty-six pounds, and the best as seldom exceed sixty-two pounds. A bushel of wheat of the average weight wfil yield, on being ground, Of bread flour 47 pounds. fine pollard . . . . coarse pollard. . 4 bran 2| 11 „ Loss of weight in the processes) g of grinding and dressing. . . / 60 pounds. RYE. 51 Chapter III. RYE— BARLEY — OATS. Ear and Plant of Rye. Kye — Secale cereale. In former times this grain was much more extensively cultivated among us, than it has been ot late years. Not two centuries have passed since rye flour, either by itself, or mixed with wheat, furnished nearly all the bread consumed by the labouring classes in England. 52 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. At present rye is cultivated by our farmers prin- cipally that they may draw from it a supply of green ood for their flocks. For this purpose the plants, which are sown in November, are eaten early in the spring, before they begin to spindle, which they will do towards the end of March. After this staire of the growth has taken place, the succulent quality of the blade is impaired ; it becomes coarse and harsh ; and is no longer agreeable to animals. When rye is left to ripen its seeds, these are, for the most part, applied in this country to purposes dis- tinct from human food ; the principal use to which the grain is put being the preparation of a vegetable acid, to be employed by tanners in an operation which they call raisin and whereby the pores of the hides are distended, so as to dispose them the more readily to imbibe the tanning principle of the oak- bark, which is afterwards applied. Rye, when parched and ground, has been recently used as a substitute for coffee. It would be difficult, however, to convince any one accustomed to the use of this grateful beverage, that the grain of home production is ever likely to take place, at least to any extent, of the fragrant Mocha bean. Rye straw is useless as fodder, but forms an ex- cellent material for thatching, and is so suitable for stuffing horse-collars, that saddlers will usually pay for it a very good price. Botanists distinguish four species of this plant: — Secalc villosum, Seca/e orientate , Seca/e creticum , and Seca/e cerea/e the last only of which is cultivated in Britain. This, which is said to be a native of Candia, was intro- RYE. 53 duced into England many ages ago. There are two varieties of this species, occasioned more probably by difference of culture than by any inherent vari- ance in the plants : one is known as winter and the other as spring rye. It was formerly usual to sow rye together with an early kind of wheat. The harvested grain, thus necessarily intermixed, was termed meslin , from miscellanea: it also obtained the name of mung- coniy corruptly from monk-corn , because bread made with it was commonly eaten in monasteries. With the exception of wheat, rye contains a greater proportion of gluten than any other of the cereal grains, to which fact is owing its capability of being converted into a spongy bread. It contains, likewise, nearly five parts in every hundred of ready formed saccharine matter, and is in consequence easily convertible into malt, and thence into beer or ardent spirit ; but the produce of this last is so small, in comparison with that of malted barley, as to offer no inducement for its employment to that purpose. Rye has a strong tendency to pass rapidly from the vinous to the acetous state of fermentation, and whenever that circumstance has intervened, it would be vain to attempt either to brew or to distil it. Unmalted rye meal is mixed in Holland with barley malt, in the proportion of two parts by weight of the former, with one part of the latter, and the whole being fermented together forms the wash whence is distilled all the grain spirit produced in that country, and known throughout Europe as Hollands Geneva. There must, however, be some circumstances of a peculiar nature connected with the process, as con- ducted by the Dutch distillers, since no attempts made elsewhere have ever been successful in obtain- ing a spirit having the same good qualities. Ilye is the common bread-corn in all the sandy f 3 54 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. districts to the south of the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Finland, furnishing abundance of food for the numerous inhabitants of places which, without it, must have been little better than sandy and uninha- bitable deserts. In these districts it not only forms the chief article of consumption, but furnishes a material of some consequence to the export trade of the Prussian ports. The peasantry in Sweden subsist very generally upon rye-cakes, which they bake only twice in the course of the year, and which, during most part of the time, are consequently as hard as a board. — Linnaeus observed a curious practice in Lapland. One part of rye and two parts of barley being mixed to- gether, the seed is committed to the ground as soon as the earth is capable of tillage in the spring. The barley shoots up vigorously, ripens its ears and is reaped ; while the rye merely goes into leaf without shooting up any stem, its growth being retarded by the barley, which may be said to smother it. After the barley is reaped, the rye advances in growth, and, without any farther care of the cultivator, yields an abundant crop in the following year. This grain, to which so many human beings are thus indebted for aliment, is subject to a disease which, when it occurs, not only deprives it of all its useful properties as food, but renders it absolutely noxious, and, it may even be said, poisonous to man. When thus diseased it is called by English farmers horned rye , and by the French ergot, from the fancied re- semblance to a cock’s spur of an excrescence which the grain then bears. Whenever this disease has been witnessed, it has usually happened that a wet spring has been succeeded by a summer more than ordinarily hot. Tissot, a French physician, bestowed much attention on this subject, and upon its melan- choly consequences. It is from him we learn that the RYE. 65 excrescence just mentioned is an irregular vegetation, which springs from the middle substance, between the grain and the leaf, growing to the length of an inch and a half, and being two tenths of an inch broad: it is of a brownish colour. Bread which is made of rye thus diseased has an acrid and nauseous taste, and its use is followed by spasmodic symptoms and gangrenous disorders.— These effects cannot by any means be classed among imaginary evils. In 1596 an epidemic prevailed in Hesse, which was wholly ascribed to the use of horned rye. Some of the persons who had unfor- tunately partaken of this food were seized with epilepsy, the attacks of which, for the most part, ended fatally ; of others, who became insane, few ever fully recovered the proper use of their senses; while some, who were apparently restored, were liable through life to periodical returns of their disorder. Similar calamities were experienced in different parts of the Continent at various times, between 1648 and 1736, and these visitations have been recorded by Burghart, Hoffman, and others. In 1709, this diseased condition of the rye occurred in a part of France to such a degree, that in consequence of it no fewer than five hundred patients were at one time under care of the surgeons at the public hos- pital at Orleans. The symptoms first came on with all the apparent characteristics of drunkenness, after which the toes became diseased, mortified, and fell ofF. The disorder thence extended itself up the leg, and frequently attacked the trunk, and this some- times occurred even after amputation of the dis- eased limbs had been performed, with the vain hope of stopping the progress of the disorder. The poisonous quality of horned rye is not exerted Upon human beings alone, both insects and larger 5G VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. animals having been fatally affected by it ; even flies, that merely settled casually upon the grain, have been killed by that means ; and deer, swine, and different kinds of poultry, upon which experi- ments were tried, all died miserable deaths ; some in strong convulsions, and others with mortified ulcers. These circumstances must have been truly appalling by their severity and the frequency of their recurrence. Few evils, however, are wholly of an unmixed character, and this one is not of the num- ber. Ergot of rye , which was formerly productive of so much misery, has since found admission as a medicine into our pharmacopaeias, and is now, in the hands of skilful and honest practitioners, ren- dered subservient to the interests of society. Horned rye is of very rare occurrence in Great Britain. Barley — Ilordeum — is, next to wheat, the most important of all the cereal grains which are now cul- tivated in Great Britain. Its use as bread-corn has very much diminished of late years in this country, while its employment for the production of stimulant liquids, has, on the contrary, materially increased. The Figyptians have a tradition, from which they believe that of all the grains barley is that one which was first used for the sustenance of man. Their histories assert that a knowledge of the art of culti- vating this grain was imparted to their ancestors by the goddess Isis, who, having discovered the plant growing wild in the woods, instructed men how to cultivate it, so as at once to increase the quantity and improve the quality of its produce. Uninstructed people are generally prone to refer to supernatural agency, the origin ot all events for which they are otherwise unable to account. Dr Franklin has related, as coming' from the lips of a chief of the Susquehannah Indians, a tradition very BARLEY. 57 Ear and Plant of Common Spring Barley. similar to that of the Egyptians. “ In the beginning, * said this child of nature, “ our fathers had only the flesh of animals to subsist on ; and if their hunting was unsuccessful they were starving. Two of our young hunters having killed a deer, made a fire in the woods to broil some part of it. When they were about to satisfy their hunger, they beheld a beautiful young woman descend from the clouds, and seat herself on that hill which you see yonder among the blue mountains. They said to each other. It is a spirit that perhaps has smelt our broiling venison, and wishes to eat of it; let us offer some to her. They presented her with the tongue ; she was pleased with the taste of it, and said, Your kindness shall be re' 58 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. warded. Come to this place after thirteen moons, and you shall find something that will be of great benefit in nourishing you and your children to the latest generations. They did so, and to their great surprise found plants they had never seen before, but which from that ancient time have been con- stantly cultivated among us to our great advantage. Where her right-hand had touched the ground, they found maize ; where her left-hand had touched it, they found kidney-beans ; and where she had seated herself they found tobacco.” The native country of barley is as little known as that of wheat. Some travellers have mentioned it as being produced in a wild state in distant parts or the world; but there is reason for believing that all statements to this effect have been founded in error, since the hardiest varieties of the cultivated grain have never yet been seen to propagate themselves during two following years. The seed of cultivated barley, when chance-sown, will indeed produce plants; but the grains which these bear are rarely, if ever, seen to germinate. Some grasses which have been placed by botanists in the same genus with barley, bear to it a strong outward resemblance, yet none ot them can, by any degree of culture, be brought into use as human food, nor indeed be made to exhibit any marked improvement. One of these grasses, the hordeum murinum of Linnaeus, known com- monly as wall-barley, bears the nearest resemblance of any to the cultivated plant. In one respect barley is of more importance to mankind than wheat. It may be propagated over a wider range of climate, bearing heat and drought better, growing upon lighter soils, and coming so quickly to maturity, that the short northern summers which do not admit of the ripening of wheat, are BARLEY. 59 yet of long; enough duration for the perfection of barley. It is the latest sown, and the earliest reaped of all the summer Grains. In warm countries, such o as Spain, the farmers can gather two harvests of barley within the year, one in the spring from winter- sown grain, and the other in autumn from that sown in summer. Barley sown in June is commonly ready for the sickle in three months from the time of the seed being committed to the ground ; and in very northern climates the period necessary for its growth and per- fection is said to be of still shorter duration. Lin- naeus relates, in his tour in Lulean Lapland, that on the 28th of July he observed the commencement ot the barley harvest, and although the seed was sown only a few days before Midsummer, that the grain was perfectly ripe, the whole process having thus oc- cupied certainly not longer than six weeks. The property of not requiring moisture admirably fits barley for propagation in those northern countries where the duration of summer is limited to a very few months in the year, and where wet is of very rare occurrence from the time when the spring rains are over, at the end of May or the beginning of June — after which period the seed-time commences — until the autumnal equinox, previous to which the harvest is reaped. So hurtful is excessive moisture to the plants, that even heavy dews, if of frequent occurrence, are found injurious. Wet is detrimental at all periods; but the mischief is exhibited in a very different manner, according as it occurs before or after the formation of the ear. If during the former stage, the leaves, as already mentioned, will become yellow and sickly, and the ears will probably not make their appearance ; whereas it these should already have been formed and completely filled when visited by rain, the grain no VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES* Premature germination of nn ear of Barley. .vill sprout in the ear, and should the weather which follows be warm and genial, this growth will be so rapid that the ears will put on the appearance of tufts of grass. Barley is besides very liable to be beaten down by rain and to lodge; and should this occur after the filling of the ear, germination of the grains will take place to such a degree that the first growth will be completely rotted and destroyed by the second. Gentle showers, however, if of short continuance, and if they do not happen either very early after the plant is above the ground, or during the time of blooming, or when the ear is full, are rather beneficial than hurtful. It is worthy of re- mark that the very quality which renders barley so precarious a crop in unsettled climates, imparts to it likewise its chief value. The facility with which BARLEY. 61 the grain is made to germinate is favourable to the operation of converting it into malt, which is, in fact, simply the process of germination induced and carried forward up to and not beyond the point when the maximum quantity of saccharine matter is de- veloped in the grain. In its composition barley differs materially from wheat: it contains more starch, far less gluten, and about seven parts in a hundred of saccharine matter ready formed, which latter constituent wheat does not possess previous to germination. Botanical writers enumerate four distinct species of barley: of these there are many varieties produced by differences of soil, climate and culture. Spring Barley — Hordeum vulgare — is the kind most commonly cultivated in England. Of this spe- cies farmers distinguish two sorts; one the common, and the other the rath- ripe barley. These, in fact, are the same plant, the latter being a variety occasioned by long culture upon warm gravelly soils. If seeds ot this kind are sown in cold or strong land, the plants will ripen nearly a fortnight earlier than seeds taken from other strong land ; but this holds good only during the first year. This variety is said in extraordinary seasons to have been returned to the barn within two months in this country. Siberian barley, another variety, was brought into culture in the year 1768, by Mr. Halliday, who received a very small portion out of about a pint of seed which had been presented by a foreign nobleman to the London Society for the Encouragement of Arts. This variety exhibits, on first coming up, a broader blade, and is of a deeper green than common barley. The ears are shorter, containing only from five to nine grains in length, while the common sort has from nine to thir- teen grains. Siberian barley arrives at maturity about a fortnight earlier than other kinds. a 67, VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. Winter or Square Barley, called also Bear, or Big — Hordeum hexastichon — is the second species, (/3). This is rarely cultivated in the southern parts ot England; but in the northern counties and in Scot- land is very generally sown, being a much more hardy plant than spring barley. The grains are large and plump, and the spike is thicker and shorter than the last-described species, being seldom longer than two inches, and square. Maltsters in the southern division of the kingdom are of opinion that this barley does not answer their purpose so well as that more usually cultivated among' them, while in Scotland this idea is considered to be an unfounded prejudice. The number of trains in each ear is Greater than BARLEY. 63 are found on spring barley in the proportion of three to two, one ear frequently yielding forty or more grains. These are disposed in six rows, two of these being on each of two sides, and one row on each of the other sides. Ear and Plant of Two-rowed Barley. Long-eared Barley, sometimes called Two- rowed Barley — Hordeum distichon — is partially cultivated in every part of England, and is a very good sort. Some persons object to it, that the ears being long and heavy, it is more apt to lodge than other kinds. The grains are regularly disposed in a double row, lying over each other like tiles on a roof, or like the scales of fishes. The ear is somewhat flatted, being transversely greater in breadth than in thickness. The husk of the grain is thin, and its malting qualities are excellent. 64 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. Sprat or Battledore Barley — Hordeum zeocri - ton — has shorter and broader ears than either of the sorts already described ; its awns or beards are longer, so that birds cannot so easily get out the grains, which also lie closer together than those of other kinds. Sprat barley seldom, if ever, grows so tall as either of the other species, and its straw is not only shorter, but coarser, so as to render it not desirable for use as fodder. It was formerly the universal practice in this country to sow barley in the spring. • The end of March or beginning of April was the more usual time, but the sowing was sometimes deferred to the beginning of May. The practice in this respect has somewhat varied of late, and a more early season has been chosen for sowing, so that it is not uncom- mon for the process to be performed in January, under the idea that the produce in such cases is greater. In the county of Norfolk, where the culti- vation of barley is carried forward very extensively, and with the greatest skill, the farmers were formerly guided in their choice of seed time by a maxim which had long been handed down to them from father to son : — “ When the oak puts on his gosling grey, ’Tis time to sow barley night and day meaning, that when the oak exhibits the grey ap- pearance which accompanies the bursting of its buds, a few days preceding the expansion of the leaves, it is then improper to lose any time in getting their seed-barley into the ground. The budding and leafing of the birch trees is, in Sweden, considered an indication of the proper time lor barley-sowing. In different countries there are, of course, different natural guides in the operations of husbandry ; but an intelligent and observing farmer, in every country, BARLEY 65 wiil not fail to regard those which have been sane tioned by experience ; while the agriculturist, who is bound by a servile adherence to particular months and even weeks for his operations, will unwisely treat as old saws such relics of the practical skill of our forefathers as the lines we have quoted. Lin- naeus, the great Swedish naturalist, constantly ex- horted his countrymen to observe at what time each tree unfolds its buds and expands its leaves. In our own country, Mr. Stillingfleet, an eminent naturalist, made a series of very accurate observations upon this interesting appearance of the spring. A farmer who would keep a calendar of Nature in the same manner for a few years, and at the same time re- gister his days of sowing and the issue of his har- vest, would secure, no doubt, a valuable collection of rules for his guidance, peculiarly applicable to the exact circumstances of situation and soil amidst which he pursues his calling *. The produce of barley, according to the quality of the soil, is from three to four quarters to the acre. A larger produce is not unfrequent ; and even so much as seven quarters have been reaped in very favourable seasons and situations. The average weight of a Winchester bushel of barley is between fifty and fifty-one pounds, and the same measure of bigg weighs but little more than forty-six pounds. It is very seldom that the former is found to weigh beyond fifty-two, or the latter be- yond forty-eight pounds to the bushel. The average length of a grain of barley, taking the mean of many thousand measurements, is 0.345 inch, while that of a grain of bigg is 0.3245 inch. The medium length of these two species gives, therefore, as nearly as * See Howitt’s Book of the Seasons, p. 99. G 3 G6 vegetable substances. possible one-third of an inch, which agrees with the lowest denomination or basis — the barleycorn of our linear measure *. The purposes to which barley is principally ap- plied in this kingdom are those of brewing and distilling. Some portion is still brought more di- rectly into consumption as human food ; but this portion, for the most part, now undergoes the pre- vious process of decortication (removal of the bark), whereby it is converted into what is called Scotch or pearl barley. This grain, in its raw state, is also used to some extent for feeding poultry and fattening swine, for which latter purpose it is com- monly converted into meal. The ancients were ac- customed to feed their horses upon barley, as is the case, among the Spaniards to the present day ; and Pliny relates (Book xviii. c. 7,) that the Roman gladiators were called Hordearii , from their use of this grain as food. The use of barley in the preparation of a fer- mented liquor dates from the very remotest times. The invention of this preparation is ascribed to the Egyptians by ancient Greek writers, one of whom, Dioscorides, attributes the first cultivation of barley to the same people, under the guidance of Osiris ; while Herodotus informs us that the people of Egypt, being without vines, made their wine from barley f. Pliny, in his Natural History, gives the Egyptian name of this liquid as Zythum J. An in- toxicating liquor is still made from this grain, both in Egypt and Nubia, to which the name of bouzah is given. This is of very general consumption among the lower rank of people. Burekhardt observed another use to which barley is applied in the latter * Supp. Encyc. Brit., Art. Brewing, f Lib. ii. cap. 78. " J Nat. Hist, lit xxii. c. 25, barley. 67 country. The green ears are boiled in water, and served up to be eaten with milk. Among the Greeks beer was distinguished as barley wine , a name which sufficiently identifies the intoxicating property of the liquid, and the material whence this was drawn. From a passage in Tacitus we learn that the German people were, in his day, acquainted with the process of preparing beer from malted grain ; and Pliny describes a similar liquid under the name ot Cerevisia, an appellation which it retained in Latin books of more recent date. It farther appears that malt liquor has formed an article of manufacture and consumption in this country for a period at least coeval with the time of Tacitus ; but we do not know whether any one kind of grain was exclusively em- ployed in its preparation, or whether wheat and barley were not used for the purpose, either indis- criminately or in conjunction. The general drinks of the Anglo-Saxons were ale and mead : wine was a luxury for the great. In the Saxon Dialogues preserved in the Cotton Library in the British Museum, a boy, who is questioned upon his habits and the uses of things, says, in answer to the inquiry what he drank — “Ale if I have it, or water if I have it not.” He adds, that wine is the drink “ of the elders and the wise.’* Ale was sold to the people, as at this day, in houses of entertain- ment ; “ for a priest was forbidden by a law to eat or drink at ceapealethetum , literally, places where ale was sold*.” After the Norman conquest, wine became more commonly used ; and the vine was extensively cultivated in England. The people, how- ever, held to the beverage of their forefathers with great pertinacity ; and neither the juice of the grape Apr of the apple were ever general favourites. The * Turner’s ‘ Anglo Saxons,’ vol, iii. p. 32. 68 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. wassail song of the fifteenth century, whose burden was — “ Bring us home good ale,” has been quoted in another volume of this work *. “ The old ale knights of England,” as Camden calls the sturdy yeomen of this period, knew not, however, the ale to which hops in the next century gave both flavour and preservation. Hops appear to have been used in the breweries of the Netherlands in the beginning of the fourteenth century. In England they were not used in the composition of beer till nearly two centuries afterwards. It has been affirmed that the planting of hops was forbidden in the reign of Henry VI. ; and it is certain that Henry VIII. forbade brewers to put hops and sul- phur into alef- In the fifth year of Edward VI., the royal and national taste appears to have changed ; for privileges were then granted to hop-grounds. Tusser, in his five hundred points of good husbandry, printed in L557, thus sings the praises of this plant: — “ The hop for his profit I thus do exalt. It strengtheneth drink and it flavoureth malt; And being well-brewed long kept it will last, And drawing abide, if ye draw not too fast.” [n the reign of James I. the plant was not suf- ciently cultivated in England for the consumption ; as there is a statute of 160S against the importation of spoilt hops. In 1830, there vrere 46,727 acres occupied in the cultivation of hops in Great Britain. Of barley, there are above thirty million bushels annually converted into malt in Great Britain ; and more than eight million barrels of beer, of which four-fifths are strong beer, are brewed yearly. This is a consumption, by the great body of the * 1 Timber Trees and Fruits,' p. 255. f ‘ Archieologia,’ vol, iii. OATS. G9 people, of a favourite beverage which indicates a distribution of the national wealth, satisfactory by comparison with the general poverty of less advanced periods of civilization in our own country, and with that of less industrious nations in our own day. Common bearded Oats. Common Oats. Oats — Avena. — This grain is held to have had its origin in a more northern cli-mate than any other of the cereal plants, since it cannot be cultivated with advantage in the lower latitudes of the temperate zone. In the south of England, even at high eleva- tions, the produce is inferior in quality to that which is obtained in more northern districts. 70 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. The time and mode of the introduction of oats luto England are equally unknown, and some writers have expressed their opinion that this grain is indi- genous with us. One thing appears sufficiently clear — the varieties cultivated here, at this time, have all been originally imported from different parts of the continent of Europe, the names of which countries they are made to bear. This grain is extremely serviceable to man, pos- sessing the advantage of growing upon soils and in situations where neither barley nor wheat can be raised. It is the hardiest of all # the cereal grains that are cultivated in Great Britain. In its outward structure the oat plant differs from wheat and barley in the form of the ear. This in oats is not a spike with a single rachis, but a panicle, resembling in some degree, the stem and branches of a pine. While young and light, these branches arrange themselves round the centre of the stem, but as they advance towards maturity and acquire weight, they generally bend over on one side. By this arrange- ment the air and light are enabled to visit, and the rain to wash, each individual grain, so that any lodgment of the larvae of insects or the seeds of parasitical plants is prevented. The grains being pendent, and having the open extremities of their chaff towards the earth, are effectually defended from the -lodgment of rain within, an advantage which does not attend the growth of wheat or barley ; and those grains are consequently liable to diseases from which oats are exempted. Drought and heat are unfavourable to this grain, which under such cir- cumstances becomes husky and tasteless, containing but little farinaceous matter, and that little being of nferior quality. The Avcna saliva, which species is commonly cul- tivated, has several varieties. The most remarkable OATS. 7\ of these are the black or long-bearded oat; the white oat ; red oat ; and the naked oat, or pilcorn. The best variety of oats produced in Great Bri- tain is unquestionably the potato oat. Of this kind the first plants were discovered growing accidentally on a heap of manure in company with several po- tato plants, the growth of which was equally acci- dental ; and it is to this circumstance that the dis- tinctive name of this variety is owing. To an occur- rence thus purely accidental, and which might well have passed unnoticed, we are indebted for decidedly the best and most profitable variety we possess of this useful grain. It requires to be sown on land in a good state of cultivation, when the grains on ripen- ing will be found large, plump, and firm, often double, and of a quality which ensures for the corn a higher price in the market than is given for any other variety. It also yields an abundant produce of straw. Po- tato oats form almost the only kind now cultivated in the north of England and the lowland districts of Scotland. The seed-time of oats is almost universally in March and April. The grain is scattered broad-cast in the large proportion of from four to six bushels to the acre, the medium produce of which is from forty to fifty bushels. The nutritive quality of oats is smaller in a given weight than that of any other cereal grains. In oats of the best quality it does not exceed 75 per cent., while that of wheat is 95^ per cent. The very small proportion of saccharine matter ready formed in oats renders it very difficult and unprofitable to convert this grain into malt. Brewers at the present day do not employ oats in the preparation of any kind of beer; in former times, when the public taste was different from what it is at present, a drink called mum was manufactured for sale, and in the 72 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES, preparation of this liquid, oatmeal was employed. The principal use now made of oats in the southern division of the kingdom is the feeding of horses, for which purpose the grain is admirably adapted ; a large quantity of this grain is farther consumed in the fattening of poultry. The deer of Henry VIII. were fed with oats. In the Privy Purse Expenses of this king (published by Mr. Nicolas), is the follow- ing entry: — “ Paied to the keper of Grenewiche parke for xiiij lode of hey And for vi lode of Oots, for the relief of the dere there, And for the carriage thereof, vj li. ijs. viiid.” Oatmeal, prepared by va- rious processes of cooking, composes at this day a large proportion of the food of the inhabitants of Scotland, and particularly of the better-fed portion of the labouring classes. Oaten cakes, too, are much used in Lancashire. The wild oat, which is certainly indigenous to this country, is found to be a very troublesome weed. It is said that the seed will remain buried under the soil during a century or more without losing its vegeta- ting power, and that ground which has been broken up after remaining in grass from time immemorial, has produced the wild oat abundantly. It is a curious fact that the vital principle of some vegetables will lie dormant, under certain circum- stances, for long and indefinite periods without being extinguished. Seeds have been made to grow in this country which were brought from Herculaneum, after having: been buried for more than seventeen cen- turies, but which, having during all that period been deprived of air, had been prevented from vegetating. The necessity that exists for the access of air in some degree, in order to promote or set in action vege- table life, has been shown by the experiments of several ingenious men, who, having placed seeds under circumstances otherwise favourable to their USE OF CORN IN ENGLAND. 73 growth, in the exhausted receiver of an air-pump, ascertained that they were thereby prevented from exhibiting any sign of vitality. The Anglo-Saxon monks of the abbev of St. Edmund, o v in the eighth century, ate barley bread, because the income of the establishment would not admit of their feeding twice or thrice a day on wheaten bread*. The English labourers of the southern and midland counties, in the latter part of the eighteenth century, refused to eat bread made of one-third wheat, one- third rye, and one-third barley, saying, that “ they had lost their rye-teeth t*” It would be a curious and not unprofitable inquiry, to trace the progress of the national taste in this particular. It would show that whatever privations the English labourer may now endure, and whatever he has endured for many generations, he has succeeded in rendering the dearest kind of vegetable food the general food of the country ; this single circumstance is a security to him against those sufferings from actual famine which were familiar to his fore-elders, and which are still the objects of continual apprehension in those countries where the labourers live upon the cheapest substances. Wages cannot be depressed in such a manner as to deprive the labourer, for any length of time, of the power of maintaining himself upon the kind of food which habit has made necessary to him ; and as the ordinary food of the English labourer is not the very cheapest that can be got, it is in his power to have recourse for a while to less expensive * Dugdale’s Monaslicon, quoted in Turner’s History of the Anglo-Saxons, vol. iii. p. 25. f Annals of Agriculture, quoted in Eden’s History of the Poor \oi. i. p. 526. 74 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. articles of subsistence should any temporary scarcity of food or want of employment deprive him of his usual fare, — an advantage not possessed by his Irish fellow-subjects, to whom the failure of a rice or potato crop is a matter not of discomfort merely, but of absolute starvation. But the materials for such an inquiry are very imperfect; — and although the assiduous devotion of an antiquary might collect many valuable illustrations from neglected records, it is evident that in the present instance we can do little more than put together a few scattered facts, which the diligence of previous inquirers has already collected. Pierce Plowman, a writer of the time of Edward III. says, that when the new corn began to be sold, ‘ Woulde no beggar eat bread that in it beanes were, But of coket, and ciemantyne, or else clene wheate*.” This taste, however, was only to be indulged “ when the new corn began to be sold for then a short season of plenty succeeded to a long period of fasting ; the supply of corn was not equalized throughout the year by the provident effects of commercial specula- tion. The fluctuations in the price of grain, experi- enced during this period, and which were partly owing to insufficient agricultural skill, were sudden and excessive. On the securing of an abundant harvest in 1317, wheat, the price of which had been so high as 80s., fell immediately to 6s. 8 d. per quarter f. The people of those days seem always to have looked for a great abatement in the price of grain on the successful ffathering of everv harvest; and the in- ordinate joy of our ancestors at their harvest-home — a joy which is faintly reflected in our own times — * proceeded, there is little doubt, from the change which the gathering of the crops produced, from * See the Athenaeum, a weekly literary paper, Feb. 3, 1832. f Stow. USE OF CORN IN ENGLAND. 75 want to abundance, from famine to fulness. That useful class of men who employ themselves in pur- chasing; from the producers that they may sell agaiw to the consumers, was then unknown in England. Immediately after the harvest, the people bought their corn directly from the farmers at a cheap rate, and, as is usual under such circumstances, were improvident in the use of it, so that the supply fell short before the arrival of the following harvest, and prices advanced out of all proportion. In a valuation of Colchester, in 1296, almost every family was provided with a small store of barley and oats, usually about a quarter or two of each. Scar cely any wheat is noticed in the inventory, and very little rye*. The corn was usually ground at home in a handmill, or quern ; although wind and water mills were not uncommon. The general use of the latter machines was probably prevented by the compulsory laws by which the tenant was under an obligation to grind his corn at the lord’s mill ; and, therefore, to evade the tax, called multure , the labour of the hand- mill was endured. In Wicliff’s translation of the Bible we find a passage in the 24th chapter of St. Matthew thus rendered: — “Tw'o wymmen schulen (shall) be gryndvnge in one querne/’ Harrison, the historian, two centuries later, says, that his wife ground her malt at home upon her quern. In the present authorized version of the Bible, published more than half a century after Harrison, the word “ quern” yields to “ mill.” By that time, probably, the trades of a miller and a baker were freely exercised ; and the lord’s mill and the corporation oven had been super- seded by the competition growing out of increasing capital and population. The Reformation, and the discovery of America, * For some particulars of another valuation of this town, nee Rights of Industry — Capital and Labour, p. 101, VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. 76 were events that had a considerable influence upon the condition of the great body of the people in Eng- land. The one drove away the inmates of the mo nasteries, from whence the poor were accustomed to receive donations of food ; the other, by pouring the precious metals into Europe, raised the price of pro- visions. In the latter half of the sixteenth century, wheat was three times as dear, both in England and France, as in the former half. The price of wheat, upon an average of years, varied very little for four centuries before the metallic riches of the New World were brought into Europe; upon an average of years it has varied very little since*. The people of the days of Henry VIII. felt the change in the money-value of provisions, although the real value remained the same; and they ascribed the circum- stance to the dissolution of the monasteries. • There is an old song of that day in the Somersetshire dialect, which indicates the nature of the populai error : — “ I’ll tell thee what, good vellowe, Before the vriars went hence, A bushel of the best wheate Was zold for vourteen pence; And vorty eggs a penny That were both good and newe ; And this, I say, myself have seen, And yet I am no Jewef.’ When wheat was fourteen-pence a bushel, it was probably consumed by the people, in seasons of plenty, and soon after harvest. During a portion of the year there is little doubt that the English labourers had better food than the French, who, in the fifteenth century, were described by Fortescue thus: — “Thay drynke water, thay eate apples, with • See Storch, Cours d’Economie Politique, tome i. p. 477. f Reliques of Antient Poetry. USE OF CORN IN ENGLAND. 77 bred right brown, made of rye.” Locke, travelling in France, in 1678, says of the peasantry in his journal, “ Their ordinary food, rye bread and water*.” The English always disliked what they emphatically termed, “ changing the white loaf for the brown.” They would have paid little respect to the example of Masinissa, the African general, who is described by Polybins as eating brown bread with a relish at the door of his tent. Their dislike to brown bread in some degree prevented the change which they proverbially dreaded. In the latter part of the six- teenth century, however, this change was pretty ge- neral, whatever was the previous condition of the people. Harrison says, speaking of the agricultural population, “ As for wheaten bread, they eat it when they can reach unto the price of it, contenting themselves, in the mean .time, with bread made of oates or barlie, a poore estate, God wot !” In another place, he says, “ The bread throughout the land is made of such graine as the soil yieldeth ; nevertheless, the gentilitie commonlie provide themselves suffi- ciently of wheate for their own tables, whilst their household and poore neighbours, in some shires, are inlbrced to content themselves with rie or barlie.” Harrison then goes on to describe the several sorts of bread made in England at his day, viz. manchet, cheat, or wheaten bread ; another inferior sort of bread, called ravelled, and lastly, brown breadf. Of the latter there were two sorts : “ One baked up as it cometh from the mill, so that neither the bran nor the floure are any whit diminished. The other hath no floure left therein at all ; and it is not only the worst and weakest of all the other sorts, but also * Lord King’s Life of Locke. t See Percy’s Preface to the Northumberland Household Book, Nicolas’s edit. p. xiv. 78 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. appointed in old time for servants, slaves, and the inferior kind of people to feed upon. Here- unto, likewise, because it is drie and brickie in the working, some add a portion of rie-rneale in oar time , whereby the rough drinesse thereof is some- what qualified, and then it is named mescelin, that * is, bread made of mingled corne.” In the house- hold book of Sir Edward Coke, in 1596, we find constant entries of oatmeal for the use of the house, besides “ otmell to make the poore folkes porage,” and “ rie-meall, to make breade ior the poore.” The household wheaten bread was partly baked in the house and partly taken of the baker. In that year it appears, from the historian Stow, that there was a great fluctuation in the price of corn ; and he particularly mentions the price of oatmeal, which would indicate that it was an article of general con- sumption, as well in a liquid form, as in that of the oat-cakes of the north of England. In 1*626, Charles 1., upon an occasion of sub- jecting the brewers and maltsters to a royal license, declared that the measure was “ for the relief of the poorer sort of his people, whose usual bread was barley; and for the restraining of innkeepers and victuallers, who made their ale and beer too strong and heady.” The grain to be saved by the weakness of the beer was for the benefit of the consumers of barley-bread. Attheperiod of the Revolution (16S9)vvheaten bread formed, in comparison with its present consumption, a small proportion of the food of the people of Eng- land. The following estimate of the then produce of the arable land in the kingdom tends to prove this position. This estimate was made by Gregory King, whose statistical calculations have generally been considered entitled to credit. USB OF CORN IN ENGLAND. 79 Wheat Bushels. . 14.000,000 Kve .... . 10 000,000 Bariev . 27,000,000 Oats .... . 16.000.000 Pease . 7.000.000 Beans . 4.000,000 Vetches . 1,000,000 In all ... . 79.000,000 At the commencement of the last century wheaten bread became much more generally used by the labouring classes, a proof that their condition was improved. In 1725, it was even used in poor- houses, in the southern counties*. The author of “ Three Tracts on the Corn Trade,” published at the beginning of the reign of George III., savs, “ It is certain that bread made of wheat is become much more generally the food of the common people since 1689. than it was before that time ; but it is still very far from being the food of the people in gene- ral.” He then enters into a very curious calcula- tion, the results of which are as follow : “The whole number of people is 6,000,000, and of those who eat Wheat, the number is, .... 3,750.000 Barley 739,000 Rye 888,000 Oats 623,000 Total 6,000,000” This calculation applies only to England and Wales. Of the number consuming wheat, the pro- portion assigned to the northern counties of York, Westmoreland, Durham, Cumberland, and North- umberland, is only 30,000. Eden, in his History of the Poor, says, “About fifty years ago (this was written in 1797), so small was the quantity of wheat used in the county of Cumberland, that it was only * Eden, vol. i. p. 562. 80 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. a rich family that used a peck of wheat in the course of the year, and that was used at Christmas. The usual treat for a stranger was a thick oat-cake (called havcr-bannock) and butter. An old labourer of eighty-five remarks that when he was a boy he was at Carlisle market with his father, and wishing to indulge himself with a penny loaf made of wheat flour, he searched for it for some time, but could not procure a piece of wheaten bread at any shop in the town.” At the time of the Revolution, according to the estimate of Gregory King, 14,000,000 bushels of wheat were grown in England. In 1828, according to the estimate of Mr. Jacob, in his Tracts on the Corn Trade, 12,500,000 quarters, or 100,000,000 bushels, were grown. The population of England at the Revolution was under five millions, so that each person consumed about three bushels annually. The population, at the present time, is under fifteen millions, so that each person consumes about seven bushels annually. Thames Corn- Bar jc-. in crc. 81 Chapter IV. The principal cereal plants which cannot be pro- fitably cultivated in Great Britain, but upon which the inhabitants of other countries depend for sub- sistence in even a greater degree than the English peasantry depend upon the supply of wheat, are rice, maize, and millet. The seeds of these plants are less palatable than wheat, and less nutritious than that or any other of the cerealia already described : the chief cause of this last mentioned inferiority ap- pears to be the absolute absence of gluten from their composition. The three grains just mentioned will be treated of in the order wherein they are here set down, which is likewise the order of their importance, considered with reference to the number of human beings who draw from them their sustenance. Rice — Oryza sativa. This is a panicled grass, bearing, when in ear, a nearer resemblance to barley than to any other of the corn-plants grown in Eng- land. The seed grows on separate pedicles springing from the main stalk ; each grain is terminated with an awn or beard, and is inclosed in a rough yellow husk, the whole forming a spiked panicle. The stalk is not unlike that of wheat, but the joints are more numerous. The farina of rice is almost entirely com- posed of starch, having little or no gluten, and being without any ready formed saccharine matter. The outer husk clings with great tenacity to the grain, and is only to be detached from it by passing the rice 82 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. between a pair of mill-stones, placed at such a dis- tance from each other as shall serve to remove the husk by friction, without crushing the grain. This is besides enveloped by a thin pellicle, which for the most part is rubbed off’ by trituration in large mor- tars, with pestles weighing from two to three hun- dred pounds. There is little reason for doubting that this grain is of Asiatic origin. From the earliest records it has formed the principal, if not the only food of the great mass ot the population on the continent and islands of India and throughout the Chinese empire. . The introduction of rice as an object of cultivation RICK. 83 in America is of very modern occurrence. The author of a work ‘ On the importance of the British Plantations in America,’ which was published in London during the year 1701, has recorded, as a circumstance then recent, that “ a brigantine from the island of Madagascar happened to put in at Carolina, having a little seed-rice left, which the captain gave to a gentleman of the name of Wood- ward. From part of this he had a very good crop, but was ignorant for some years how to clean it. It was soon dispersed over the province, and by frequent experiments and observations, they found out ways of producing and manufacturing it to so great perfection, that it is thought to exceed any other in value. The writer of this hath seen the said captain in Carolina, where he received a hand- some gratuity from the gentlemen of that country, in acknowledgment of the service he had done the province. It is likewise reported, that Mr. Dubois, then Treasurer of the East India Company, did send to that country a small bag of seed-rice some short time after, from whence it is reasonable enough to suppose might come those two sorts of that com- modity ; the one called red rice, in contradistinction to the white, from the redness of the inner husk or rind of this sort, although they both clean and become white alike.” There is a trifling discrepancy between the latter part of this account, and the statement respecting Mr. Ashley already mentioned in a former chapter; but the main fact and the time of its occurrence are the same, and it is probable that the latter gentleman may have acted in the matter under the instruction of Mr. Dubois. The swamps of South Carolina, both those which are occasioned by the periodical visits of the tides, and those which are caused by the inland floodings 84 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. of the rivers, are well suited for the production of rice ; and not only is the cultivation accomplished with trifling labour, but the grain proves of a re- markably fine quality, being decidedly larger and handsomer than that of the countries whence the seed was originally derived. It does not appear that this naturalizing of rice in Carolina and Georgia was ever productive of much effect in regard to the diet of the inhabitants of those provinces. Their consumption of rice was doubt- less increased by it, because the abundance and cheapness of an article always influence persons to its use. But wheat and maize continued, as before, to be the bread-corn of the country, and the newly introduced grain was cultivated principally because it furnished an article in constant demand which might be transmitted to the mother-country in re- turn for British manufactured goods. Had a contrary effect followed upon the introduc- tion of rice into the then British colonies of America, and this grain had become, as in India, the universal food of the inhabitants, it is not probable that their condition would have been in any way ameliorated bv the change. In countries where rice forms the chief article of food, dearths are not by any means of uncommon occurrence. A failure of the usual supply of rain, which is followed by evil conse- quences where other descriptions of grain are raised, is productive of tenfold misery where the chief dependance is noon the crop of rice, which without its due degree of moisture proves wholly unpro- ductive. In such cases there can be found few sources of relief, other objects of cultivation being pursued to only a limited extent, and the means of the people not enabling them to compass the purchase of these scarcer articles of food, even when, through the general abundance, they may be pro- RICE. Si cured at their natural price. Happily tor the in- terests of humanity, dearths are becoming* less and less frequent of occurrence, through the better un- derstanding of subjects connected with the pro- duction and distribution of commodities. In Eng- land the people are especially guarded against this calamity by the diversity of the crops which are raised, and by the opportunity they thence enjoy of falling back upon articles of consumption less costly than those to which they are ordinarily accustomed. It is this circumstance which constitutes the advan- tage of the general use of wheaten bread — a taste which has been slowly but steadily acquired amongst us. In no way, perhaps, is the progress of a nation in civilization more unequivocally shown than in the improvement which it realizes in the food of the community. In the infancy of societies, the people are necessarily satisfied with the enjoyment of such indigenous productions as fall most naturally within their reach. But in the more advanced stages of society, when articles of food, which at one time have been introduced as luxuries, are so far na- turalized as to form a part at least of the suste- nance of the common people, they, in the event of an unkindly season, have something upon which they can still tall back, so that what would other- wise be famine is at worst changed into privation. “ In those countries,” it has been judiciously ob- served by the late David Ricardo, “ where the labouring classes have the fewest wants, and are contented with the cheapest food, the people are exposed to the greatest vicissitudes and miseries. They have no place of refuge from calamity; they cannot seek refuge in a lower station ; they are already so low, that they can fall no lower. On any deficiency of the chief article of their subsist- ence, there are few substitutes of which thev can * I 86 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. avail themselves, and dearth to them is attended with almost all the evils of famine.” If a scarcity of food should be experienced in this country, the great bulk of the common people, nay even the very poorest among them, have, generally speaking, still some articles, that in foreign countries would be considered luxuries, which they can forego, some property which they can sacrifice, in order to satisfy the cravings of hunger. In India, on the contrary, and in most of the countries where rice forms the principal article of human food, the labour- ing classes are poor in the extremest sense of the word. Having few artificial wants, they are without those habitual incentives to exertion which actuate so powerfully and so beneficially people of the same rank in countries like our own. If they can acquire a meal for themselves and their families they have little thought about higher comforts ; the price of la- bour in such countries is, in fact, equal to very little beyond the purchase of the lowest description of food ; — the Indian labourer is contented with the ru- dest hut as a place of shelter; — he is without what we are accustomed to consider the most indispensable articles of household furniture, and his clothing con- sists of a few yards of the commonest cotton cloth. When the price of his ordinary food advances beyond the usual rate, he is sunk into immediate wretchedness ; he has no fund whereon he can draw for assistance, and the wages of his labour are so far from advancing under these circumstances, that the contrary tendency is uniformly experienced ; and the competition for employment is increased while the means of paying for labour are diminished. Some botanical writers enumerate four varieties of rice which thev consider as being originally distinct from each other; while others have been ot opinion RICE. 87 that the unimportant varieties which these present, and which do not in any way affect the chemical or alimentary properties of the grain, are simply the effects of difference of soil, culture, and climate. The four varieties are common rice, early rice, mountain rice, and clammy rice. Common rice is a marsh plant. If the ground on which it is sown should become dry before the plants arrive at maturity, they wither. It is this variety which grows most strongly; and on lands peculiarly adapted for it the culture is probably as advan- tageous as can well be pursued. Early rice , like the other, is a marsh plant, but it does not grow to the same size. It comes much sooner to maturity ; for while common rice is never ripe in less than six months from the time of ploughing, this variety, if placed in favourable situa- tions, requires only four months for arriving at perfection. Mountain rice thrives on the slopes of hills and in other situations where it can receive humidity only occasionally. Dr. Wallich, the able successor of Dr Roxburgh as superintendent of the botanical garden at Calcutta, sent to London a few years ago some specimens of rice grown on the cold moun- tains of Nepal. These seeds were furnished to him by the resident of the East India Company in that district, and were recognised by the Doctor as moun- tain rice. The degree of cold which this plant is qualified to bear is very great. According to the information collected on the subject by Dr. Wallich, the cultivators consider their crop quite safe if the growth of the plants is advanced five or six inches above the surface at the time the winter snows cover the ground. It is probable that the slow melting of the mow is beneficial to the growth of the plant, 88 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. which advances with great vigour on the return of spring. A knowledge of these circumstances might have led to the opinion that this variety of rice could be natural- ized in England, if the attempt had not already been fairly made by one well qualified for conducting the experiment. Samples of six different sorts of mountain rice which had been procured by Sir John Murray from the neighbourhood of Serinagur at the foot of Mount Imaus, were, on the occasion alluded to, presented by the Board of Agriculture to Sir Joseph Banks, who planted each kind in a separate bed, in a sheltered spot with a south aspect, in his garden at Spring Grove. The grains, which were sown very thin on the *21st of May, speedily sprang tip, and the plants tillered so much that the beds put on the appearance of compact, dense masses of vegetation ; each plant having from ten to twenty off-sets. Although the blades grew vigorously, at- taining in a short time to the length of two feet, there was never any symptom of a rising stem, and if the ground was not watered, either by rain or artificially every three or four days, the plants began to assume a sickly hue. In this manner vegetation proceeded, without the smallest symptom of their perfecting themselves by fructification, when the plants were suddenly destroyed by an early night frost in Sep- tember. Some of the plants, which had been trans- ferred to pots and placed in the hot-house at an early period of their growth, soon died ; while others, which were sown originally in a hot-house, pro- duced ears and flowered, but the blossoms dropped without perfecting any seed. The conclusion to which Sir Joseph Banks arrived from these experiments was unfavourable to the cultivation of rice in this country as a grain-bearing RICE. 89 plant; but he was led to consider, from the great quantity of its blades, that it would afford excellent green-meat for cattle. Clammy rice appears to be endowed with the peculiar property of growing both on wet and on dry lands: the period occupied by its growth is infer mediate between those of the common and early varieties. Rice seed is sown in Carolina in rows, in the bottom of trenches, which are about eighteen inches apart, reckoning from the centres of the trenches. The sowing is generally performed by negro women, who do not scatter the seed, but put it carefully into the ground with the hand, so as to preserve the per- fect straightness of the line. The sowing is for the most part completed by the middle of March. The water, which until then has been kept back by means of flood-gates, is at this time permitted to overflow the ground to the depth of several inches, and things remain in this state for some days, — generally about a week. The germination of the seed is pro- moted by this flooding, and the water being then drawn from the surface of the land, the plants sprout, rising in about four weeks to the height of three or four inches. At this time the flood-gate? are again opened, the fields are once more over flowed, and remain in that state during about sixteen days ; one good effect of this second flooding being the destruction of the grass and weeds which may have sprouted at the same time with the rice. The land is allowed after this to remain without further irrigation until the middle of July, being repeatedly hoed during the interval, as well to remove any weeds at the moment of their appearance, as to loosen the soil about the roots of the rice, adopting thus in all its principal parts the drill system of husbandry. At the time last mentioned, water is i 3 > 90 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. again admitted, and remains covering the surface until the grain is actually ripened. The rice harvest in the United States usually com- mences at the end of August, and extends through the entire month of September, or even somewhat later. The reaping is performed with a sickle by male negroes, and these are followed by females, who collect the rice into bundles. This cultivation is found to be extremely unhealthy to the negroes employed in its prosecution. The alternate flooding and drying of the land in so hot a climate, where natural evaporation proceeds with great rapidity, must necessarily be prejudicial to health. To avoid exposure to this unwholesome atmosphere, the whole white population abandon the low grounds to the care of negro cultivators. The mortality thus occasioned among the labourers in rice districts is so great, that while the general increase of population in the States exceeds by far that realized in the older settled countries of Europe, fresh supplies of negro slaves must continually be brought, to repair the waste of life, from the more northern slave states of the Union. The cultivation of rice is very extensively and successfully carried on in the rich meadows of Lombardy, which can be irrigated by the waters of the Po. The meadows chosen for the purpose are perfectly flat. After the seed is sown, the water is turned on and allowed to cover the surface to the depth of several inches during the whole course of its growth, and until the rice is ripe. Three crops are taken successively from the ground in this manner without manuring ; but the soil is then so far exhausted, that it must be manured and planted for a time with other crops, before another succession of rice harvests can be drawn from it. This system of agriculture proves the most profit* RICE. 91 able to the cultivator, of any that is carried on in Lombardy; but the same unwholesome effect is ex- perienced there as in Carolina ; and the government at Milan finds it expedient to restrict the cultivation within a certain limit, beyond which the production of rice is not allowed. The quantity of seed usu- ally sown is three bushels to the acre, and the average produce, from the same measure of land, is commonly about six quarters In the province of Valencia in Spain, the method of rice cultivation is very similar to that pursued in Lombardy. The water remains on the ground even during the operations of harvest, and the reapers are obliged to wade up to their knees in order to cut the grain, other persons following to receive the sheaves as they are cut, and to convey them to some dry place, where the grain is detached from the ear bv the treading; of mules. The hollows between Columbo and Candy, in the island of Ceylon, are devoted to the production of rice. The fields on which it is sown are artificially formed into a regular succession of terraces, one abo/e another, so that the water of irrigation may be made to flow from a higher to a lower level, the plants being in different stages of their growth. In some cases the water is led for a mile, or even two miles along the side of a mountain, and is then dis- charged over the highest terrace, and thence down- ward in succession to the lowest, according as mois- ture may be required by each. Bishop Heber, for whom the charms of nature, whether in a wild or cul- tivated state, were never displayed in vain, remarks, on visiting this district, that “ the verdure of the young rice is particularly fine, and the fields are really a beautiful sight, when surrounded by and contrasted with the magnificent mountain scenery*.” * Heber’s Journey, vol. iii. p. 169. 92 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES M. Duhamel, in his admirable work on Husbandry, has detailed the various processes followed by Chinese cultivators in raising rice. The great and careful labour bestowed upon this object is no doubt called for in that vast empire by the state of its population, which renders it a matter of necessity to draw con- tinually from the soil all the assistance which it can be made to impart. “To hasten the germination of the seed-rice it is placed in baskets and immersed during some days in standing water. “ When the ground is so thoroughly soaked that the surface is like soft mud, it is ploughed with a buffalo, yoked to a very simple plough, without wheels, and having only one handle. The clods are after this broken down by means of a rude kind of hurdle, drawn also by a buffalo, the driver sitting upon the hurdle to increase the weight. The ground is cleared very carefully of all stones, and what- ever weeds may be found are diligently removed with their roots. The land is then partly covered with water, and smoothed by a harrow which has several rows of great iron teeth. “ The seed-rice, when it has once sprouted, is known to be good ; grains not in this situation are rejected, and the remainder is sown by hand very thickly and as equally as possible upon a part only of the land, which is thus used as a sort of nursery for the remainder. The land having at this time upon it just as much water as will barely cover it, the points of the plants appear above the surface one day after the seed has been sown. “ In a short time, when the plants have acquired a little strength, they are sprinkled over with lime- water, the object of this being the destruction r.f insects. For this purpose a small basket with a long handle is used, and this being filled by immersion RICE. 93 in the lime-water, the fluid runs through in divided portions over the plants. This practice is found to be so efficacious, that the Chinese are said to hold its first inventor in the highest veneration. c1 “ Towards April, when the plants cover thickly the ground that has been sown, the greatest part of them are pulled up with their roots and planted in tufts, pretty far asunder in a quincunx form, in fields prepared for their reception. A serene day is chosen for this operation, which must be performed quickly, so that the plants are as short a time as possible out of the ground. “ After this, water is admitted to overflow the rice, the grounds being, for this purpose, always situated near a rivulet, pond, or great pool of water, from which they are separated only by a bank which may readily be cut. It sometimes happens, however, that the water is below the level of the fields, in which case the necessary quantity is conveyed in buckets, which are worked chiefly by the aid of ropes, — a most laborious occupation. “ Though a man cannot step in these rice-grounds without sinking up to his knees, the Chinese weed them three times during the summer, and that so carefully, that every weed they can find is pulled up by the roots. “ When the rice is ripe, which is known in the same manner as wheat, by its turning yellow, it is cut down with a sickle, made into sheaves, and con- veyed into a barn, where it is threshed with flails very similar to those used among ourselves*.” The husk and inner pellicle are removed by beating and trituration, pretty much in the same manner as has already been described. It is worthy of remark, that with the view of ob- taining from the soil the largest produce it will yield, * Culture de Torres, tom. ii. p. 180. 94 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. the Chinese are careful not to place the plants at all close together lest they should rob one another of their needful portion of nourishment. This and the farther practice of frequent weeding, which from their manner of performing the operation is equiva- lent to hoeing among us, brings their method com- pletely into agreement with Tull’s system of horse- hoeing husbandry, which was not proposed for adop- tion in Europe until its prosecution had been thus practised commonly, and for ages, in the Chinese empire. In all its principal features the method of culture is the same in Hindustan as it is in China. In some parts of Bengal the farmer suffers much from the depredations committed by wild hogs during the night. In order to guard as much as possible against this evil, a sort of shed is erected upon bamboos in the field, wherein a servant is stationed to scare away these intruders, — a precaution that is accompanied by much trouble and expense, and which yet is not always completely efficacious in preserving their pro- perty. These erections, which are very numerous in some districts towards the period of harvest, present a very curious appearance to the traveller. The cultivators of rice in America sometimes suffer severely from the depredations of the rice-bird, of Catesby ( Emberiza oryzivora ), known familiarly in :he country by the name of Bob Lincoln. This bird is about six or seven inches long ; its head and the under part of its body are black, the upper part is a mixture of black, white, and yellow, and the legs are red. Immense flocks of these birds are seen in the island of Cuba, where the rice crop pre- cedes that of Carolina; but when from the hardening of the grain the rice in that quarter is no longer agreeable to them, they migrate towards the north, and pass over the sea in such numerous parties, as RICK. 05 Rice-birds, Male and Female. to be sometimes heard in their flights by sailors fre- quenting that course. These birds appear in Caro- lina while the rice is yet milky. Their attacks upon the grain while in this state are so destructive as to bring considerable loss upon the farmers. The birds arrive in the United States very lean, but thrive so well upon their favourite diet, that during the three weeks to which their visit is usually limited, they become excessively fat, so as to fly with difficulty, and when shot to be burst with the fall. So soon as the rice begins to harden here, they retire to other parts, remaining in one place only so long as the rice continues green. When this food entirely fails, they 9G VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. have recourse for their subsistence to insecis, until the maize begins to form its grains, and then the milky substance which these contain is devoured with the same avidity that marks their attacks upon the rice-plant. Extensive flocks of the oryzivora are found during the spring and summer in New York and Rhode Island ; there they breed, quitting with their young for the southward, in time for the tender rice-grains of Cuba. It is remarkable that the males and females do not migrate in company, the females being always the first to perform their voyages. These birds are eaten as a great delicacy, and the song of the male is said to be melodious. The uses to which rice is actually applied may be easily defined. In a great part of India and China it forms the subsistence of the native population, more exclusively and to a greater extent than can perhaps be said of any other vegetable substance in any known region of the globe. In the countries just mentioned, as well as in those districts of Africa where it is used indiscriminately with maize, rice un- dergoes but little culinary preparation, being, for the most part, simply boiled with water, and eaten either by itself, or accompanied by some stimulating or oily substance. In countries, on the other hand, where it is employed only as an auxiliary article of food, rice is subjected to a greater degree of preparation for the table, and except when used to thicken broths, is seldom presented, unless after con- coction with eggs, and milk, and sugar, which cover the natural insipidity of the grain. In years when the harvest is deficient in this country, it is usual to hear a great deal about the practicability and advantage of mixing rice with wheaten or rye flour for making bread, and this may, without doubt, be done in a certain moderate pro- portion ; such bread, however speedily becomes RICE. 97 harsh and dry. A writer in the Journal des Sciences , des heltres , et des Arts , has, indeed, given direc- tions, by following which, it is said, fermented bread may be made of rice without admixture with the flour of any other grain*. We are told that the Chinese make a kind of wine of rice, which resembles, both in colour and flavour, the white wine of Xeres ; but it is not known bv what process they are enabled to succeed in this manufacture. In the East, considerable quantities of ardent spirit are extracted from this grain by fer- mentation and distillation. It has been declared impracticable to manufacture beer from rice, in consequence of the difficulty which attends its previous conversion into malt. M. Du- brunfaut has stated that this necessary process may be readily and completely accomplished in the mash tub, by mixing one part, by weight, of malted barley, with four parts of crushed rice, which has previously been mixed with its own weight of water. The * The method here referred to is as follows. — First reduce the rice to powder in a mill, or throw the whole grains into water at nearly a boiling heat, and ailow them to soak during some hours. Then drain off the water, and when the rice shall have become sufficiently dry, beat it in a mortar, and pass the powder through a fine sieve. This flour must next be placed in a kneading-trough, and moistened in the necessary degree with water rendered gluti- nous by boiling whole rice in it for some time ; add salt, and the proper quantity of leaven or yeast, and knead the whole intimately together. The dough must then be covered with warm cloths and left to rise. During this fermentative process, the dough, which was of a pretty firm consistence, will become so soft as not to be capable of being formed into loaves. It is, therefore, placed in the requisite quantities in tin forms, and these being covered with large leaves, or with sheets of paper, are introduced into the oven, the heat of which speedily sets the dough sufficiently, so that the tins being reversed, their contents are turned out upon the leaves or paper. The bread, when perfectly baked, will be of a fine yellow colour, similar to that imparted to flour by the yolk9 of oggs, and when new is said to be sufficiently agreeable. K 98 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. ready formed saccharine matter of the barley mall appears to have the singular property of speedily converting the fecula of unmalted corn into a kind of soluble matter which has the fermentative properties of sugar. If malt and rice flour, diluted so as to have a pasty consistence, he mixed and mashed to- gether, and then left during three or four hours, the mixture will present the appearance of a liquid which is slightly saccharine to the taste, and having a sediment at the bottom of the vessel, which is found, on examination, to be composed of only the husks of barley and rice. M. Dubrunfaut used for the purpose rice from which the husk had not been removed previous to its being crushed, and which in this state is known by the name of paddy , or more properly paddee. The practice has obtained very much, during the last few years, of importing this paddee, in prefer- ence to shelled rice, its cost being lower in foreign markets, and the importers avoiding a very large proportion of the customs’ duty chargeable on that already prepared for use. Some very effective ma- chinery has been set up for the purpose of removing the husk and cuticle, and these operations are per- formed full as perfectly, and with less breaking of the grains than follows the employment of the ruder methods usually pursued in the countries of production ; the loss, by waste, is also found to be less on the transport of paddee than of shelled rice M \ I Z It. 99 Maize — Zta Mays. Chapter V. M A I Z E M 1 L LET B U C K-W HEAT. Maize, or Indian Corn — Zea Mays. — Of this plant only one species is known, but there are several varieties which are thought to owe their distinctive character to the accidental modifications of climate, soil, and culture, rather than to any original vari- 100 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. ance. The plant consists of a strong, reedy, jointed stalk, provided with large alternate leaves, almost like flags, springing from every joint. The top pro- duces a bunch of male flowers, of various colours, which is called the tassel. Each plant bears, like- wise, one or more spikes or ears, seldom so few as one, and rarely more than four or five, the most usual number being three : as many as seven have been seen occasionally on one stalk. These ears proceed from the stalk at various distances from the ground, and are closely enveloped by several thin leaves, forming a sheath, which is called the husk. The ears consist of a cylindrical substance, of the nature of pith, which is called the cobb , over the entire surface of which the seeds are ranged, and fixed in eight or more straight rows, each row hav- ing generally as many as thirty or more seeds. The eyes or germs of the seeds are in nearly radial lines from the centre of the cylinder; from these eyes proceed individual filaments of a silky appear- ance, and of a bright green colour ; the aggregate of these hang out from the point of the husk, in a thick cluster, and in this state are called the silk. It is the office of these filaments, which are the stig- mata, to receive the farina, which drops from the flowers on the top, or tassel, and without which the ears would produce no seed, — a fact which has been established by cutting off the top previous to the developement of its flowers, when the ears proved wholly barren. So soon as their office has been thus performed, both the tassel and the silk dry up, and put on a withered appearance. The grains of maize are of different colours, the prevailing hue being yellow, of various shades, sometimes approaching to white, and at other times deepening to red. Some are of a deep chocolate colour, others greenish or olive-coloured, and even MAIZE. 101 the same ears will sometimes contain grains of different colours. Unlike the cereal grains which have been already described, naturalists are at no loss in determining the native region of maize, which is confidently held to be America, the Indians throughout that conti- nent having been found engaged in its cultivation at the period when the New World was first dis- covered. This grain is of scarcely less importance than rice, for the sustenance of man. It forms a principal food of the rapidly increasing inhabitants of the United States of America ; it constitutes almost the entire support of the Mexicans ; and is consumed in Africa to an extent nearly, if not quite, equal to the con- sumption of rice in the same quarter. The merits of Indian corn have been very differ- ently estimated ; and while some persons have in- vested it with a value equal, if not superior, to that possessed by the rest of the cerealia, other persons have, on the contrary, placed it at the lowest station among the family, scarcely, indeed, allowing it worthy to take its place in the group. Without meaning in any way to involve the reader in this controversy, it is yet necessary to set fairly before him the facts connected with the question, and he may then be enabled to form a correct judgment on the matter. Maize is said to contain no gluten, and little, if any, ready-formed saccharine matter, whence it has been asserted to have but a very small nutritive power ; on the other hand, it is seen that domestic animals which are fed with it very speedily become fat, their flesh being at the same time remarkably firm. Horses which consume this corn are enabled to per- torm their full portion of labour, are exceeding.y hardy, and require but little care ; and the common people of countries where Indian com forms the k 3 102 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. ordinary food, are for the most part strong and hardy races. The produce of maize, on a given extent of cultivation, is greater than that of any other grain; and the proportional return for the quantity of seed committed to the ground is equally advantageous. No argument can be founded either way upon the liking or disliking of individuals. Man is in this, as well as in most other respects, very much the creature of habit; and preferences, both national and individual, are often shown by him, in regard to articles of food, which would be wholly incompre- hensible upon any other ground. We need not go beyond the bounds of Europe for abundant proofs of this fact, if indeed such are not offered by our own personal observation. It falls within the knowledge of the writer, that a gentleman who in his boyish days had been nurtured in a village on the coast, in a remote part of Scotland, acquired such a fondness for some weed thrown up by the sea, and which through the poverty of the inhabitants was made to form part of their sustenance, that in after-life, and when he had returned from a protracted resi- dence abroad, he procured a supply of his favourite weed to be regularly sent to him in London, and ate as the greatest delicacy that upon which ihe members of his family could only look with disgust. Of all the cerealia, maize is the least subject to disease. Blight, mildew, or rust, are unknown to it. It is never liable to be beaten down by rain, or by the most violent storms of wind ; and in climates and seasons which are favourable to -its growth and ma- turity, the only enemies which the maize farmer has to dread are insects in the early stages, and birds in the later periods of its cultivation. American Indian Corn is the largest known variety of maize. It is found growing wild in many of the West-Indian islands, as well as in MAIZE 103 the central parts of America; and there can be no doubt of its being- a native of those regions. In fa- vourable situations it has a very considerable growth, attaining to the height of from seven to ten feet; in some cases it has acquired the gigantic height of fourteen feet, without in any way impairing its productive power. Its spike, or ear, is eight or ten inches in length, and five or six inches in cir- cumference. The plant generally sends out one, two, or more suckers from the bottom of the stalk, but these it is advisable to remove, not only as they draw away part of the nourishment which should go to support the main stalk, but because the ears which the suckers bear ripen at later periods than the others, and the harvest could not all be simultane ously secured in the properest state of maturity. This variety will rarely come to maturity in north ern climates, and could never be securely relied on for a crop in any part of Europe. In the Mexi- can states, where this grain is known by the name of Tlaouili , there are few parts of either the lower dis- tricts— tierra caliente — or of the table-land, whereon it is not successfully cultivated. In the former dis- tricts its growth is naturally more luxuriant than in the latter ; but even at an elevation of six or seven thousand feet above the level of the sea, its pro- ductiveness is calculated to excite wonder, if not to provoke incredulity on the part of European agriculturists. Some particularly favoured spots have been known to yield an increase of eight hundred for one ; and it is perfectly common in situations where artificial irrigation is practised, to gather from three hundred and fifty to four hundred measures of grain for every one measure that has been sown. In other places, where reliance is placed only on the natural supply of moisture to the soil from the periodical rains such an abundant return is not expected 104 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. \ but even then, and in the least fertile spots, it is rare for the cultivator to realize less than from forty to sixty bushels for each one sown. The system of husbandry employed is closely analogous to that so often already referred to as Tull’s Horse-hoeing1 Plan. The seed is sown, from three to five grains together, at regular intervals of three feet, in rows sufficiently far apart to admit of the passage of a small plough between them, for the purposes of loosening the soil around the roots, and of removing the weeds. The use of manure is alto- gether unknown in Mexican maize husbandry. Humboldt states that in some warm and humid regions of Mexico three harvests of maize may be annually gathered, but that it is not usual to take more than one. The seed-time is from the middle of J une to near the end of August. A great part of the internal commerce of Mexico consists in the transmission of this grain, the price of which varies considerably in not very distant stations, owing to the imperfect state of the roads, and the insufficient means of transport. As an instance of this, Hum- boldt mentions the fact, that during his stay in the intendancy of Guanaxuato, the fanega (five bushels) of maize cost at Salamanca nine, at Queretaro twelve, and San Luiz Potosi twenty-two, livres. For want of a proper diffusion of commercial capi- tal, the Mexican public is without the advantage of magazines for storing corn, and for preventing, by that means, great fluctuations in price. Tt is a for- tunate circumstance, and one which should be men- tioned as adding very materially to the natural value of maize in warm climates, that it will remain in store uninjured for periods varying from three to five years, according to the mean temperature of the district. This kind of corn is generally planted in the MAIZE. 105 United States of America about the middle of May, bo as to avoid the mischance of its experiencing frost after it is once out of the ground. The Indians who inhabited the country previously to the forma- tion of any settlement upon its shores by Europeans, having no calendar or other means of calculating the efflux of time, were guided by certain natural indications in their choice of periods for agricultural operations. The time for their sowing of maize was governed by the budding of some particular tree, and by the visits of a certain fish to their waters, — both which events observation had proved to be such regular indicators of the season, as fully to warrant the faith which was placed on their recurrence. These simple and untaught people discovered and practised a method of preserving their grain after harvest, which afforded a certain protection against the ravages of insects, and which might be advan- tageously adopted in other situations, and in climates where this evil is very prevalent. Their method was to separate the corn from the cobb as soon as the harvest was finished ; to dry it thoroughly by expo- sure to the sun, and to a current of air; and then to deposit it in holes dug out of the earth in dry situa- tions, lining these holes with mats of dried grass, and covering them with earth, so as completely to prevent the access of air. With the exception of artificial irrigation, to which recourse is not had in the United States, the method of sowing and managing maize is there singularly analogous to that pursued in Mexico. The propor- tionate produce, from a given quantity of seed or a certain breadth of land, is smaller, however, than that realized in Mexico, although the practice of manuring is universally followed. As compared with the yielding of other kinds of grain, maize cultiva- tion is, nevertheless, highly productive in the United 106 vegetable substances. States. In Pennsylvania, where the average crop ot wheat does not exceed from fourteen to seventeen bushels, that of maize amounts to from twenty to thirty bushels to the acre. A writer in the ‘ Monthly American Journal of Geology and Natural Science’ considers that maize produces the heaviest crops near the northern limits of its range. The American farmers find this advantage to attend the partial culture of maize upon their farms, that the time of harvesting is some weeks later than that of wheat, and that, consequently, the general operations of the harvest may be conducted without great bustle and temporary advance of w^ages, to be followed by a season of inaction and consequently of idleness to the labourer, — evils which are commonly expei ienced in England. The second variety of maize has white grains. This kind, which is cultivated in Spain, Portugal, and Lombardy, is altogether a smaller plant than the va- riety just described, seldom exceeding six or seven feet in height: the leaves are narrower, and the tops hang downwards. The ears or spikes are not more than six or seven inches long. The French, among whom this grain is partially cultivated, have given to it the name of Ble de Turquie, doubtless because their seed was originally obtained from that country. Except in unusually favourable seasons, the two varieties hitherto described will not come to maturity in England, although they are sometimes sown as a curiosity in warm spots in gardens. The third variety has both yellow and white seeds. It is even smaller than the last-mentioned, seldom rising to a greater height than four feet: the ears do not often exceed four or five inches in length. In ordinary seasons, it will ripen its grains perfectly in England; and one reason why it has been presumed that its cultivation would pro\e MAIZE. 107 advantageous to this country, is the shortness ol time required for its growth, whereby the late frosts to which we are sometimes liable in spring, and the early frosts of autumn, would be alike avoided. This particular variety is cultivated in some of the middle regions of the European continent, as well as ii? some parts of North America, from which latter country it is understood to have its origin. It is also partially cultivated in Germany, not as a bread- corn, but that it may be malted and used in the pre- paration of a kind of beer, or made to yield an ardent Spirit. The use chiefly made of it, however, is that of fattening swine and poultry. In the cultivation of Indian corn in northern climates, it is proper to make choice of warm spots, and particularly to avoid shady situations. In order to admit the sun as much as possible to the plants, and probably also with the view of affording more nutriment to the grain, it is usual to remove the blades, together with the top and tassel, as soon as its office of dropping its fecundating farina upon the ears has been fully accomplished. This process is very easy of performance: when the blades and tops are perfectly dry they are stacked and thatched, and form an excellent substitute for hay and chaff in the spring, both for cattle and horses, as well as for sheep, all these animals being attracted by its sweet- ness. It may generally be known when the corn is ri- pened by the dry and white appearance put on by the husk : a more intimate inspection is, however, accomplished without difficulty. The ears must then be plucked off, together with the husks, and con- veyed at once in carts to the barn. In America, the stalks are usually left standing for some time longer. Being then 'cut near to the ground, tied up into bundles, and stacked in a dry place, they will prove 103 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. useful as food for horned cattle, which, from the sac- charine quality of the plants, will thrive upon them. Ears of Maize in different stages. The ears are preserved in bins or cages which are called corn-cribs, sometimes with the husk and at other times without it, and it is not considered good farming' to shell the corn before it is required to be sent to market. This operation of shelling is very easily performed. The only implement required for the purpose is a piece of iron in shape like a sword-blade, the edge of which is not sharp, and this iron being fixed across the top of a* tub in which the shelled grains are to be collected, the ear is taken MAIZE 109 in both hands and scraped lengthwise smartly across the edge of the iron until all the grains are removed. In this manner, it is said, an industrious man will shell from twenty to twenty-five bushels of corn in the course of the day. The cobb which remains makes a very tolerable quick-burning fuel, and thus no part of the plant proves altogether without use. The grain forms one-half the measure of the ear, that is to say, two bushels of ears will yield one bushel of shelled corn. So correct is this estimate found to be, that in the markets of the United States, where Indian corn is sold both shelled and with the cobb, two bushels of the latter are taken without question by the purchaser, as being equal to one bushel of shelled grain. An amusing, and in many respects an instructive book, was published a few years since upon the merits of Indian corn, by one whose sanguine wishes upon the subject of its introduction as a corn-plant into England, led him farther than most people have been inclined to accompany him. There is to be seen in the work here referred to a very minute and interesting account of all the various processes which must be attended to by the maize-grower before his grain is ready for sale, as well as very minute di- rections for turning the produce to the best and most agreeable account in family economy*. Although the public mind seems at present to be differently impressed upon the matter, it does not appear very improbable that some hardy variety of this plant may at no very distant day be regularly cultivated in some parts, at least, of England, and in Ireland. Sir Richard Bulkely, who obtained some seed from Brandenburgh, sowed it in the last-mentioned island, and it is recorded that his produce was exceedingly great, fully equal indeed to anything asserted&of * A Treatise on Cobbett’s Corn, by W. Cobbett. L 110 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. Mexican fecundity. Might not this grain be gradu- ally introduced, to the advantage of that portion of the kingdom, affording to the peasantry a more nourishing food than that upon which the bulk of tnem are now constrained to subsist? That Indian corn is well qualified to form the entire food — if that were necessary — of a people, is amply ex- emplified by the Mexicans, the great bulk of whom seldom partake of any other description. Captain Lyon, in the narrative of his travels in Mexico, has given an amusing account of the mode of preparing tortillas , a species of cake made with the crushed grains of maize, which is eaten hot at the meals of all classes of people, the more wealthy using the cakes in the way we are accustomed to use wheaten bread, — as an auxiliary to more nourishing aliments — and the peasants being fain to enjoy them as a substantive food, seasoning them, when they have the opportunity, by the addition of chilies stewed into a kind of sauce, wherein the tortillas are dipped. Simple as the art may appear of thus making an unleavened cake with moistened flour, some persons are found to acquire a greater degree of expertness in it than others ; and so great is the necessity for their preparation, and the desire ot having them well concocted, that according to Cap- tain Lyon, “ in the houses of respectable people, a woman, called from her office Tortillera, is kept for the express purpose ; and it sounds very oddly to the ear of a stranger during meal-times, to hear the rapid patting and clapping which goes forward in the cooking-place, until all demands are satisfied.*” The various uses to which the maize plant and grain may be applied cannot perhaps be better enu- merated than in the words of Dr. Franklin, a mail accustomed to make a sober estimate upon every * Lyon’s Mexico, vol. ii. p. 136. MAIZE. Ill subject that fell under his observation; and who, however enthusiastic he might be in the cause of virtue and rational freedom, never suffered himself to be betrayed into exaggeration, or to be carried away by a too sanguine imagination in affairs con- nected with the business of life. “ It is remarked in North America, that the English farmers, when they first arrive there, finding a soil and climate proper for the husbandry they have been accustomed to, and particularly suitable for raising wheat, they despise and neglect the culture of maize or Indian corn ; but observing the advantage it affords their neighbours, the older inhabitants, they by degrees get more and more into the practice of raising it ; and the face of the country shows from time to time that the culture of that grain goes on visibly augmenting. “ The inducements are the many different ways in which it may be prepared so as to afford a whole- some and pleasing nourishment to men and other animals. First, the family can begin to make use of it before the time of full harvest; for the tender green ears, stripped of their leaves, and roasted by a quick fire till the grain is brown, and eaten with a little salt or butter, are a delicacy. Secondly, when the grain is riper and harder, the ears, boiled in their leaves and eaten with butter, are also good and agreeable food. The tender green grains dried may be kept all the year, and, mixed with green haricots (kidney beans), also dried, make at any time a pleas- ing dish, being first soaked some hours in Avater, and then boiled. When the grain is ripe and hard there are also several ways of using it. One is to soak it all night in a lessive or lye, and then pound it in a large wooden mortar with a wooden pestle; the skin of each grain is by that means skinned off, and the farinaceous part left whole, which being 112 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. boiled swells into a white soft pulp, and eaten with milk, or with butter and sugar, is delicious. The dry grain is also sometimes ground loosely, so as to be broken into pieces of the size of rice, and being: winnowed to separate the bran, it is then boiled and eaten with turkies or other fowls, as rice. Ground into a finer meal, they make of it by boiling a hasty pudding or bouilli, to be eaten with milk, or with butter and sugar ; this resembles what the Italians call polenta. They make of the same meal, with water and salt, a hasty cake, which being stuck against a hoe or other flat iron, is placed erect before the fire, and so baked to be used as bread. Broth is also agreeably thickened with the same meal. They also parch it in this manner. An iron pot is filled with sand, and set on the fire till the sand is very hot. Two or three pounds of the grain are then thrown in, and well mixed with the sand by stirring. Each grain bursts and throws out a white substance of twice its bigness. The sand is separated by a wire sieve, and returned into the pot to be again heated and repeat the operation with fresh grain. That which is parched is pounded to a powder in mortars. This being sifted will keep long for use. An Indian will travel far and subsist long on a small bag of it, taking only six or eight , ounces of it per day mixed with water. The flour of maize, mixed with that of wheat, makes excellent bread, sweeter and more agreeable than that of wheat alone. To feed horses, it is good to soak the grain twelve hours, they mash it easier with their teeth, and it yields them more nourishment. The leaves stripped off the stalks after the grain is ripe, tied up in bundles when dry, are excellent forage for horses, cows, &c. The stalks, pressed like sugar-cane, yield a sweet juice, which being fermented and distilled yields an excellent spirit; boiled without fermentation, it MAIZE. 113 affords a pleasant syrup. In Mexico, fields are sown with, it thick, that multitudes of small stalks may arise, which being- cut from time to time, like asparagus, are served in desserts, and thin sweet juice extracted in the mouth by chewing them. The meal wetted is excellent food for young chickens, and the old grain for grown fowls In addition to the many uses enumerated by Franklin in the foregoing account, Humboldt ac- quaints us that the Mexican Indians, previous to the conquest of their country, were accustomed not only to express the sweet juice from maize-stalks for the purpose of fermenting it into an intoxicating liquor, but that they boiled down this juice to the con- sistence of syrup ; giving it likewise as his opinion that they were able even to make sugar from this inspissated juice. In confirmation of this opinion, he recites a letter written by Cortez, who in de- scribing to the Emperor Charles V. the various pro- ductions in both a natural and manufactured state which he found in the new country, asserts;, that among these were seen “ honey of bees and wax, honey from the stalks of maize, which are as sweet as sugar-cane, and honey from a shrub which the peo- ple call maguey. The natives make sugar from these plants, and this sugar they also sell.” There is no question that the productions here enumerated will yield saccharine matter; but crystallized sugar, properly so called, is a different preparation, and, from our present knowledge, it is difficult to believe that any such substance could have been so prepared. The Indians, at the period above alluded, to, evinced considerable skill in the preparation of fer- mented liquors, which is by no means lost by the Mexicans of the present day. “ A chemist,” says Humboldt, “ would have some difficulty in preparing * Franklin’s Works, vol. ii. pp. 276-8, 4to edition, 1818. L 3 114 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. the innumerable variety of spirituous, acid, or saccha- rine beverages which the Indians display a peculiar address in making, by infusing the grain of maize, in which the saccharine matter begins to develope itself by germination. These beverages, generally known by the name of chicha , have some of them a resemblance to beer and others to cyder.” The spirituous liquor called pulque de mahis or tlaouiliy which is prepared from juice expressed from the stalk of the maize, forms, in some parts of the republic, a very important article of commerce. It has been said that Indian corn is free from all liability to disease. In contradiction of this, M. Roulin has asserted that a diseased state of this grain, similar in its nature to that described as inch dent to rye under certain circumstances, is not unfre- quently met with in Columbia. The ill effects attributed to the ergot of maize, although serious, are however by no means of so fatal a character. Among the effects, all animals, including the human race, who partake of it, are subject to the shedding of their teeth and hair, and quadrupeds to the addi- tional loss of their hoofs; fowls that have fed upon it lay their eggs without shells. Its action, when ad- ministered medicinally, is said to be even more powerful than that of the ergot of rye. It must be remarked that in the narrative of no other traveller have we met with a similar statement, and that in other countries, where maize is quite as familiarly known as in Colombia, the disease has never been observed. Millet — Species of Sorghum and Sitaria. These are true grasses, and naturally allied to one of the most numerous tribes. In light sandy soils, under the scorching rays of the sun, and in situations where sufficient moisture cannot be obtained for the MILLET 115 production of rice, millet is successfully cultivated Sorghum forms a chief dependance of the people in some parts of India — through the arid districts of Arabia — in Syria, where it has been produced from the earliest periods — and in Nubia, whose inhabitants cultivate this almost to the exclusion of every other grain. The seeds of Panicum millet are by much the smallest of any of the cereal plants, but the number borne upon each stalk is so exceedingly great as to counterbalance that disadvantage, and to render this equally productive with other of the culmiferous plants : it is to this circumstance that its name, from mille , a thousand, has been ascribed. Of this sort there are two modifications, distin- guished by the form of their spike, one being com- posed of a single rachis, while the other is very much branched. The difference of form thus exhibited is of so marked a character that it can scarcely be viewed as a modification brought about by difference of culture. Of each of these there are to be found some species which chiefly exhibit themselves as such by the vary- ing colour of their grains, and by the circumstance of these being either naked or encrusted. One kind of millet, the spike of which is com- pact, has been supposed to be a native of the north of Europe, and is commonly known — at least in this quarter of the globe — as German Mil- let, Sitaria germanica. It is thought, however that this variety was originally imported from India and acclimatized in Germany. Nor does it afford any direct evidence against this opinion, that seeds apparently of the same kind, brought from India, and subjected at once to the same culture, do not perfect their seeds ; since it is well known that the habits of plants may be changed by slow degrees 116 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. to an extent quite sufficient to account for this va- riance. The stalk of this, and indeed of all the varie- ties of millet, resembles a jointed reed, having at every joint a long broad leaf embracing the stalk with its base. This variety rises to the height of three or four feet, and terminates in a compact spike about eight or nine inches long, somewhat thicker at the base than at the top, b^set with small round grains, which adhere but slightly to the husk, and therefore are very liable to be shaken out when ripe. The use principally made of this grain is the feeding of poultry. Italian Millet — Sitaria * t.alica — bears a con- siderable resemblance to the variety just described. Italian Millet— Sitaria. Aalica. MILLET. 117 This variety is decidedly a native of India, where i\ bears the name of congue. The plant is stronger, the spike and the seed are larger, and to bring it to maturity requires a warmer climate than suffices for German millet. The use to which this grain is brought in Tuscany, is that of feeding domestic fowls and animals, including horses. The larger species of animals are also fed upon the leaves and culms, of which last-mentioned portion brushes are like- wise made. The Italians also make from the flour a kind of bread, which is dark coloured and coarse. Like those of maize, the seeds of both these varieties are of various colours. Panicled Millet is the species most usually cul- tivated. The commonest variety, which botanists call Sorghum vulgare , is known by various names in the different districts where it is grown. In India it is called jovaree ; in Egypt and Nubia dhourra ; while in our West-Indian colonies it has received the name of Guinea corn, either because the seed was first conveyed thither from the western coast of Africa, or as some persons have affirmed, because of its extensive use in feeding the African negroes throughout those colonies. The height to which this plant attains varies according to the soil and culture. In Egypt its growth seldom exceeds five or six feet, while Burckhardt* speaks of the stalks of dhourra as being sixteen or twenty feet long. The leaves are thirty inches long, and two inches wide in the broadest part. The flowers, when they first come out in large panicles at the top of the stalk, resemble the male spikes of the maize plant. These flowers are succeeded by roundish seeds, the colour of which is, in some cases, a milky white, with a black umbilical dot; in others the seeds are red, but in both cases they are wrapped round with the chaff, and are * Travels in Nubia, p. 280. 118 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. better protected from feathered depredators than other kinds of millet. This grain was introduced into cultivation in Switzerland about the middle of the last century by M. Tschiffeli, who received about a spoonful of the seed from Dr. Schreber. M. Tschiffeli published an account of his method of cultivation in the Trans- actions of the Berne Society; some extracts from which paper will suffice to show the capabilities of this grain when cultivated in northern lati- tudes. Among the advantages which it offers are stated, its adaptation to all sorts of soils, the small quantity of manure which it requires, the trifling amount of labour for which it calls, and the small degree of exhaustion which it occasions to the soil, in comparison with the largeness of the return which it yields. M. Tschiffeli sowed his first seed in the month of May, on a gravelly soil exposed to the north wind, and which the year before had borne a very indifferent crop of bigg. The seed was spread very thin, and to this circumstance he attributed the fact that the stalks rose to the height of eight feet and upwards. The ears were above ten inches long, and but for an inopportune shower of hail which destroyed half the seed, the spoonful would probably have been multi- plied into a peck of grains. In May of the following year, about a quart of seed was sown upon a piece of ground twenty paces long and half as broad, which space, it was soon apparent, was far too circumscriben for the quantity of seed. The stalks came up very close, and were interwoven with each other, reaching scarcely to the height of five feet ; and the ears were uuch smaller than those of the preceding year. The oroduce, however, was seven pecks, or equivalent to fifty-six for one. In the next year, thirty square rods of land were sowed with half a peck of the seed. MILLET. 119 Here, again, the. millet came up far too thick, being almost as much crowded from its greater tillering, as it was in the preceding year; notwithstanding which, the produce was so great, that twenty bushels were harvested, being a return of one hundred and sixty for one, and at the rate of more than one hundred bushels to the acre. M. Tschiffeli was of opinion that ten pounds of seed would prove an ample allowance for an acre of ground, and that greater space being thus allowed for the individual plants, the proportion be- tween the quantities sown and harvested would be still more favourable. It does not appear that millet has ever been subjected to the system of drill hus- bandry, although the results here given seem to point out that system as being peculiarly applicable to its cultivation Sorghum is cultivated largely in some parts of China and in Cochin China. In England the autumn is rarely sufficiently dry and warm for ripening its seeds, otherwise the plant might prove useful in some poor and light soils, the produce of which is ordinarily insufficient to repay the greater expense attendant upon the cultivation of other grain. Sorghum was raised in this country as a rare plant, in the garden of John Gerarde, as early as 1596. The golden-coloured millet seeds seen in our gro- cers’ shops are the produce of the sorghum sacchara- tum, or yellow-seeded millet. Use is made of these in a similar manner with rice, for the preparation of puddings. This variety is likewise a native of India ; it is cultivated largely in China and Cochin China; and has been introduced into the island of Jamaica. Philip Miller reared it in his garden in 1759. In warm climates millet is usually sown in May and June, and perfects its seeds within four months. The plant is not subject to blight, nor is it easily 120 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. injured by either drought or rain. The only care required in its cultivation is to allow sufficient space for the tillering of the plants, and to weed and hoe the intervals during the early part of the growth ; after which it will overtop and smother all weeds. When millet is ripe, the panicles are cut off near to the top of the stalk, and collected in sacks or baskets. They are then laid up in heaps, and care- fully covered during five or six days ; after which they are spread on the barn floor, and the grain is threshed out in the ordinary manner with a flail. The more primitive method of treading out the grain by means of oxen is resorted to in some parts of India If millet is not perfectly dry when deposited in the granary, it will soon be spoiled ; but, on the other hand, if this precaution be properly taken, there is no grain that will keep longer or better. The weevil will not touch it, and although it is doubtless the better for being turned over occasionally, that pro- cess, so indispensable with other grain, may be omitted here without producing any serious injury. In addition to the use made of the stalks as fodder, the Nubians employ them in the construction of tem- porary huts. In the barren districts of Bornou, a species of millet is produced, which is called by the inhabitants gussub , and upon which both men and animals are almost exclusively fed. By the poorer class it is fre- quently eaten, simply parched, or even without any culinary preparation. Other persons crush and then steep the seeds in water previous to eating them, and some few, who are the epicures of the land, clear the grain from the husk, pound it, and make it up into a light paste with melted fat : this favourite dish is called kaddel. Travellers who have visited the central parts of BUCK- WHEAT. 121 Africa complain much of a grievous annoyance to which they were there subjected from the prickles of a grass which grows wild and in great abundance, particularly in the neighbourhood of water. “ These prickles are of the finest and most penetrating sharp- ness that can be imagined, they attach themselves to every part of the dress, and so small are the points that it is impossible to extract them without breaking and leaving a part behind*.” The seed from this grass, which is called kaschia , is parched, broken, cleared from the husk, and, when boiled, is eaten in the manner of rice. When previously made into flour, kaschia is considered to be a great luxury. The Nubians are accustomed to prepare a fermented liquor from dhourra ; this, which they call bouzah , is considered by them as a very wholesome and nutri- tious beverage. There is one plant, the name of which seems to point it out as proper for receiving some notice in this place, although it has no natural affinity with the cerealia, and the seeds, which are rarely used as human food in any country, are never so employed in England. This plant is Buck-wheat — Polygonum fagopyrum, — also frequently called brank. The name given to this plant in Germany, where it is most cultivated, is beech-wheal , from the resemblance which the grains bear in shape to the mast or nuts of the beech tree. Buck-wheat is an annual plant, growing rather handsome, with branched herbaceous stems, having leaves which at first are roundish, but afterwards be- come arrow-shaped, resembling somewhat those of ivy, but being longer-pointed and much softer. The stalk is round and hollow; its general colour is green, but it sometimes has a reddish tinge • it com- * Denham. M 12* VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. Buck-wheat — Polygonum fagopyrum . monly grows to the height of about thirty inches- At almost every joint of the stalk, lateral branches shoot out, which are terminated by purplish flowers, and these are succeeded by small triangular-shaped seeds, which are of a brownish-black colour on the outside, and white within. This grain is usually sown in May or June, and is of such rapid growth that it generally ripens its seeds within about one hundred days from the time of sowing. It will thrive in any soil, even in those which contain little else than sand. The largest increase is, however, obtained from dry ground, which has been thoroughly ploughed and pulverized ; and in such circumstances as much as fifty or sixty bushels have been reaped from an BUCK-WHEAT. 123 acre on which only one bushel of seed has been bestowed. This plant is more generally cultivated for the sake of its green fodder, and then the seed is strewn much thicker, as much as three or four bushels being allotted to the acre. If the season is forward, and the weather continues warm, buck-wheat may be sown for this purpose in April, and will bear cutting twice during the summer; but the slightest degree of frost will destroy it entirely. When it is thus intended to apply the plant as green meat, a suffi- cient quantity should be cut one day for the con- sumption of the next. The state most proper for cutting is when the blossoms are making their ap- pearance. All animals are fond of this food, and will thrive upon it. When given to cows it causes them to yield an abundance of excellent milk, which makes good butter and cheese. The stalk and leaves will continue green during the driest weather, even when all the grasses in the meadows are burnt up. The straw or haulm is sometimes given in a dry state to cattle, but is not then so useful as when green. Buck-wheat is also sometimes sown in order that the plants may be ploughed into the ground, and serve as manure in the process of bringing lands into proper order for other crops. The time most proper for this ploughing is when the blossoms are full upon the plants, as they are then in their most succulent state. The land is then left at rest for some months, during which time the vegetable matter of the buck- wheat becomes fermented and decomposed. The variety known as Tartarian buck-wheat — Polygonum tataricum , — being of more luxuriant growth than the common sort, fagopyrum , has been preferably recommended for this object. Birds are exceedingly fond of the seeds, and one of the principal uses made of them in this country is 124 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. to feed pheasants during the winter, in spots set apart for the preservation of that species of game. With this object, the grain is sometimes sown in these preserves, and left standing to afford both cover and food to the birds ; at other times, the straw is taken unthreshed, and left in heaps at intervals throughout the places where the birds resort. Such an abundance of their favourite food will not only prevent pheasants from rambling, but frequently al- lures others from spots where an equally comfortable provision is not made. Horses are fond of the seeds, which are some- times given to them in conjunction with oats ; it is proper, however, in such case, to subject the buck- wheat to the previous operation of crushing. Pigs are often fattened upon buck-wheat, and it is said that if this food be given to them in great quantity at first, it will occasion the animals to exhibit symp- toms of intoxication, so that they run squeaking and tumbling about in a grotesque manner. As they become habituated to the use of the grain, such an effect ceases. It is necessary to crush the seeds for this purpose also. Buck-wheat is sometimes used by distillers, it being capable of yielding a considerable quantity of good spirit. This use is made of it to a great extent at Dantzig, where an extensive manufacture of cor- dial waters is continually carried on. The poor of some countries mix the meal of buck- wheat with a small proportion of wheat-flour, and make a kind of bread of the compound, which is black and bitter, and deficient in a due degree of nourishment. In Brabant it is not unusual for per- sons who derive a profit from keeping bees to sow this grain near to their dwellings, they being of opinion that no plant is equal to it for affording to those insects a proper supply of materials whence their sweet store is elaborated. THE POTATO. 125 Chapter VI. The Potato — Solatium tuberosum. Potatoes now form so valuable an article of food in many countries, as to be classed almost among the necessaries of life, and to be ranked next in im- portance to the cerealia. The common and very general culture of the potato in this kingdom at the present day renders it difficult of belief, that so comparatively short a period should have elapsed since its introduction, and that the time when this vegetable was served up in small quantities as a rarity should be in the pre- sent recollection of aged persons. There is strong evidence for believing that this plant was first introduced into England by the colo- nists adventuring to North America under the auspices of Sir Walter Raleigh, who had obtained a patent in 1584 from Queen Elizabeth “ for dis- covering and planting new countries not possessed by Christians.” Thomas Heriot, afterwards known as a mathematician, was among these voluntary exiles ; who, however, all returned within two years after they had first gone forth for the purpose of founding a colony. These voyagers most probably brought home the potato, since in Heriot’s report of the country, which is printed in De Dry’s col- lection of Voyages, he describes (vol. i. p. 17), under the article Roots, a plant called openawk, which there is little doubt is identical with the potato. “The roots of this plant,” says he, “are M 3 125 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. round, some as large as a walnut, others much larger — they grow in damp soils, many hanging together as if fixed on ropes. They are good food either boiled or roasted.” The introduction of this plant into Ireland by Sir Walter Raleigh, on his return from Virginia, is indeed well authenticated by corroborative testimony. In the manuscript minutes of the Royal Society we find that Sir R. Southwell distinctly stated to the fellows, that his grandfather was the first who cultivated the potato in Ireland, and that for this valuable root he was indebted to Sir Walter Raleigh. Among the anecdotes told of this enterprising voyager, it is said that when his gardener at Youghall, in the county of Cork, had reared to the full maturity of “ apples ” the potatoes which he had received from the knight, as a fine fruit from America, the man brought to his master one of the apples and asked if that were the fine fruit. Sir Walter having examined it, was, or feigned to be, so dissatisfied, thai he ordered the “ weed ” to be rooted out. The gardener obeyed, and in rooting out the weeds found a bushel of po- tatoes. In contradiction to the above account, Dr. Camp- bell, in his Political Survey, states that this plant was not introduced into Ireland until the year 1610; w hile some writers affirm that the people of that country were in possession of the potato at a period prior to the one just assigned. One supposition is, that this root was brought from Santa Fe into Ireland in the year 1565 ; and another, that it is of so very ancient a date in that island as to make it equally probable that it is a native vegetable of the country. It is found, however, that the plant carried to Ireland by Captain Hawkins, in 1565, was the Spanish batata, or sweet potato. The claim to its greater antiquity in that country was made by Sir Lucius O’Brien, THK POTATO. 127 who stated to Mr. Arthur Young that the venerable Bede mentioned this plant as being in Ireland about the year 700. Sir Lucius did not, however, point out the passage containing any proof of his assertion ; and the potato, largely as it is cultivated in that country, has not yet made out its title to a place in the indigenous flora of Ireland. Gerarde mentions in his Herbal , published 1597, that he cultivated this plant in his garden, where it succeeded as well as in its native country. He gives a drawing, which he distinguishes by the name of Virginian potato, having, as he states, received the roots from Virginia, otherwise called Nozem- bega. It was, however, considered by him as a rarity, for he recommends that the root should be eaten as a delicate dish, and not as common food. From the authority of more than one writer, it would appear that the potato was brought into southern Europe through a different channel, and at an earlier per'od than the introduction of the root from Virginia into this country. Clusius relates that he obtained this root at Vienna in 159S, from the governor of Mons in Hainault, who had pro- cured it in the preceding year from Italy, where, in common with the truffle, it had received the name of taratovjjli. Peter Cieca, in his Chronicle, printed in 1553, chap. xl. p. 49, relates that the inhabitants of Quito and its vicinity, besides producing maize, cultivated a tuberous root which was used as food under the name of papas : this, it is affirmed, is the same plant which had been transplanted to the south of Europe, and which Clusius received from Hainault. Humboldt rather doubts if sufficient proof can be produced of this root having been indigenous to South America Upon the interesting subject of 123 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. the native country of the potato, we gladly quote the following account by Mr. Cruickshanks* : “ Mr. Lambert, in the tenth volume of Brande’s Journal, and in the appendix to his splendid work on the genus Pinus, has collected many valuable facts which prove that the potato is found wild in several parts of America, and among others in Chili and Peru. Don Jose Pavon, in a letter to Mr. Lam- bert, says, ‘ The Solanum tuberosum grows wild in the environs of Lima, and fourteen leagues from Lima on the coast ; and I myself have found it in the kingdom of Chili,’ — and Mr. Lambert adds, ‘ I have lately received from Mr. Pavon very fine wild specimens of Solanum tuberosum, collected by him- self in Peru.’ There is also a note from Mr. Lam- bert on the same subject, in the third volume of the New Edin. Phil. Journ., with an extract from a letter of Mr. Caldcleugh, who sent tubers of the wild plant, some years ago, from Chili to the Horticul- tural Society. But it is frequently objected, that in some of those countries where the potato is found wild, it may, like many other species met with in that state in America, be an introduced, not an indi- genous plant. There are, however, many reasons for believing that it is really indigenous in Chili, and that wild specimens found there have not been acci- dentally propagated from any cultivated variety. In that country it is generally found in steep, rocky places, where it could never have been cultivated, and where its accidental introduction is almost im- possible. It is very common about Valparaiso, and I have noticed it along the coast for fifteen leagues to the northward of that port ; how much farther • * Originally published in Dr. Hooker’s ‘ Botanical Miscellany,* and quoted in the ‘Journal of the Royal Institution,’ for December, 1831. THE POTATO. 129 it may extend north or south, I know not. It chiefly inhabits the cliffs and hills near the sea, and I do not recollect to have seen it at more than two or three leagues from the coast. But there is one peculiarity in the wild plant that I have never seen noticed in print, that its flowers are always pure white , free from the purple tint so common in the cultivated varieties, and this, I think, is a strong evidence of its native origin. Another proof may be drawn from the fact, that while it is often met with in mountain- ous places, remote from cultivated ground, it is not seen in the immediate neighbourhood of the fields and gardens where it is planted, unless a stream of water run through the ground , which may carry tubers to uncultivated spots. Having observed the distribution of this and other plants through the agency of the streams employed for irrigating the land, I am led to think, that the wild specimens found near Lima may have had similar origin. If they occurred in the valley, this is more than pro- bable, as almost the whole of the land is either culti- vated by irrigation, or the uncultivated spots are overflowed when the river is swelled by the rains in the interior. Upon the whole, it may be safely con- cluded that this important vegetable is really indige- nous to Chili ; but with respect to Peru, some further evidence appears necessary to remove all doubt on the subject. The question can only be decided by ascertaining the exact situations in which the plants present themselves at Lima and Chancay, especially with respect to land that is or has been cultivated. It would be interesting, too, to know the colour of the flowers.” Though now so extensively used, the value of this root as an esculent was not perfectly appreciated for a great length of time in this country, during which period it was indeed only cultivated in gardens, and I-iU VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. that as a curious exotic. The potato was considered as a great delicacy in the reign of James the First. At that period, though it formed one of the articles provided for the household of the Queen, the quantity used was extremely small and exorbitantly dear, being at the price of two shillings per pound*. This escu- lent remained equally scarce throughout the turbu- lent times of the succeeding reign, and during the Commonwealth. Its cultivation very gradually spread in different parts of Ireland, and also into Lancashire, but not till nearly a hundred years after the discovery of Virginia by Raleigh. Mr. Buckland, of Somersetshire, in the year 1663, drew the attention of the Royal Society to its value, earnestly recommending the general cultivation of the potato throughout the kingdom to guard against a famine. This appeal was not made in vain. A committee was appointed to inquire into its merits, and all those Fellows of the Society who had lands adapted for the growth of the potato, were entreated to plant them with that vegetable ; — while Mr. Evelyn was requested to notice the sub- ject at the close of his * Sylva.* This celebrated man appears, however, not to have been aware of the importance of the potato as an article of food, for he did not mention it until more than thirty years after that period, and then in rather slighting terms. In his ‘ Kalendarium Plantarum,’ the first gardener’s calendar published in Britain, he thus writes : — ‘ Plant potatoes in your worst ground. Take them up in November for winter spending, there will enough remain for a stock, though ever so exactly gathered.’ In another of his works, — ‘ Acetarius,’ he remarks that the small green fruit or apples of the potato make an excellent salad. This assertion has not, however, been verified by experience. * Eden on the State of the Poor. THE POTATO. 131 The zeal of the Royal Society to promote the growth of .his vegetable failed for a long time to exercise much influence upon the habits of the na- tion ; and, if we may judge from the opinions which were published respecting' the plant, we must con- clude that the necessities of the poor of Ireland, who have ever been left too entirely to their own resources, did more to promote the culture of po- tatoes than all the labours of the learned, and the philanthropy of the patriotic. At the end of the seventeenth century one writer on gardening, indeed, admits that “ potatoes are much used in Ireland and America as bread, and may be propagated with advantage to poor people.” Woolridge, who wrote in 1687, twenty-four years after the appeal of Mr. Buckland, describes potatoes as being very useful in ‘ forcing fruits,’ stating that they are planted in several places in this country to good advantage ; he adds, “ I do not hear that it has been yet essayed whether they may not be propagated in great quan- tities for the use of swine and other cattle.” The celebrated Ray, who began to publish his * Historia Plantarum’ in 16S6, takes no farther notice of this vegetable than by saying that it is dressed in the same manner as Spanish batatas. Merritt, who wrote in the following year, records that potatoes were then cultivated in many fields in Wales, but in what part of the principality he does not mention. On the other hand, Lisle, who made observations on husbandry from the year 1604 to 1722, is wholly silent about the potato. In Mortimer’s Gardener’s Kalendar for 1708, this plant is directed to be sown in February; and, as if its character had not been generally known, it is added — that “the root is very near the nature of the Jerusalem artichoke, although not so good and wholesome, but that it may prove good for swine.” In the Complete Gardener, by the 132 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. eminent nurserymen, Loudon and Wise, the seventh edition of which was published in 1719, no mention is made of this root; and Bradley, who wrote about the same time, and whose very extensive works on horticultural subjects treated expressly on new im- provements in the art, notices it as if by compulsion. “ They (potatoes) are,’’ says he, “ of less note than horse-radish, radish, scorzonera, beets, and skirret; but as they are not without their admirers, I will not pass them by in silence.” These facts and extracts are curious, as they serve to show that this most valuable article of food was not brought into general use by the skill and labour of professional men, but in defiance of their pre- judices, and the bad methods of culture which they promulgated. There can indeed be little doubt that the imperfect modes of both cultivating and preparing the potato as an esculent were in a great measure the causes which prevented its more speedy adoption as a wholesome and substantive article of food ; while this very ignorance of its nature and management produced the low estimation in which it was held by writers about the beginning of the eighteenth century. To those who know anything practically of the cultivation of this plant, it must be evident how much the early sowing, the late taking up, and the leaving in the ground during winter of the roots intended for propagation, tended to deteriorate the quality of the potatoes. These circumstances, to- gether with the little culinary skill exercised in its preparation, caused it to appear under no very tempting form. A person who had been invited to taste the first potatoes which were planted in the county of Forfar, in or about the year 1730, related that the roots had been merely heated, and that they adhered to the teeth like glue, while their flavour THE POTATO. 133 was far from agreeable. The food was about to be condemned through the ignorance of the cook, when the accidental arrival of a gentleman who had tasted a potato in Lancashire, caused the rejected roots to be remanded back to the hot turf ashes, till they became as dainty as they had before been nauseous. We have no records of the early practice and pro- gress of potato-husbandry in Ireland. The more tardy progress and the less favourable results, atten- dant on this culture in England, might induce a belief that it had been better conducted in the former country; though no doubt the more genial climate of Ireland, its humidity, and the absence of those chilling winds from the east, which are so often fatal to the tender spring crops of England, gave to it a natural advantage, and might perhaps sufficiently account for the superiority of this branch of hus- bandry in Ireland over England. The early practice in this country of planting po- tatoes in February was, in itself, an effectual bar to their goodness as field culture, since the young plants betray their origin to have been from a warmer climate, by their inability to bear the slightest degree of frost with impunity; so that if they put forth their tender heads to the nipping frosts of spring, a great part of the crop is certain to fall a sacrifice. The better quality of the potato grown in Ireland, and its excellence as a substantive article of food among a population sunk to the lowest state of poverty, caused it to be brought into general use in that country, finding its way even to the tables of the rich, at a period when it was scarcely known in the sister island. The. introduction of this plant into Scotland was probably earlier than into any part of England, with the exception, perhaps, of Lancashire. The people N 131 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. living in that comity were then distinguished by a marked difference of habits, manners, and character, from their neighbours. A remnant of these pecu- liarities is even still to be found, notwithstanding the singularities of the inhabitants, and local circum- stances, combined to render this a favourable situation for the introduction and improvement of the potato. The land in Lancashire is rather poor, and the climate rainy, so that wheat, with even the present improved system of husbandry, cannot be raised to very great advantage. Oats were consequently there, as in Ireland and the Lowlands of Scotland, the staple production. The mechanics, who worked chiefly in iron and brass, were all cottagers, who followed their respective employments in the winter, and raised food for themselves upon their little patches of land in the summer. The population of Lancashire then bore a great resemblance to the cotters of Ireland. They were, however, more in- genious in handicraft works, and still more resem- bled the manufacturing peasantry in the centre and south of Scotland, who grow the whole or the greater part of their lood upon their cottage lands. Even the education of their children was formerly often obtained out of the produce of their little field; the school-master went “ thigging,” that is, collecting a portion of produce from every cottager, in propor- tion to the wealth of the individual, and to the number of pupils he might have contributed to the school-room. The poor likewise were relieved by a voluntary contribution of produce, and it is pro- bable that this system worked as well as that of a compulsory rate. Even in the smaller burghs ot Scotland, and in the villages where the lands are held on feu or perpetual lease, the same system was, and in many places still is, followed. The portioners, as they are called, are allowed a house in the village, THE POTATO. 135 and land for their subsistence, in the surrounding1 fields. In such a state of the peasantry the cultivation of the potato would offer peculiar advantages, as no other substantive article of food could be raised by the inexperienced rustic in equal quantities, with so little risk and trouble, and without any but his own and his family’s labour being required for its culture and after-preparation. Accordingly, when once this plant was introduced into cottage cul- tivation in Scotland, its importance was quickly re- cognized. It is understood, however, that this valuable root was not, until the year 1728, made the object of useful culture among the Scotch, and they were then indebted to a cottager for first attempting its culture. This man’s name was Thomas Prentice ; he was a day-labourer living near Kilsyth, in Stir- lingshire, and drawing his subsistence partly from the produce of his little plot of ground. This crop proved extremely valuable, and was almost instantly in demand for propagating other crops, first among the cottagers, and then among the farmers. Pren- tice continued to cultivate this root very carefully, and to supply his neighbours with the produce of his crop. He was, moreover, frugal and industri- ous, so that in a few years he found himself in pos- session of two hundred pounds, no small fortune at that time and in that place. When he had “ made his fortune,” he sank his capital in an an- nuity, at a good interest, upon which he lived inde- pendently to an old age. The last years of his life were spent in Edinburgh, where he died in the year 1792, at the advanced age of eighty-six, hav- ing thus been, for sixty-four years, a witness to the happy effects of the blessing which he had been in- strumental in conferring on his country. 136 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. But notwithstanding the success that attended the culture of the potato among the cottagers, its progress among the higher classes in Scotland was retarded by the opinions of the writers formerly al- luded to ; while, what is not a little singular, a mis- taken zeal in religious matters made some of the Scotch folks hostile to the innovation. “ Potatoes,” said they, “ are not mentioned in the bible,” and thus the same anathema was pronounced against them as against the “ spinning-wheel,” and the “ corn farmers. ' The name of this plant was indeed inserted in the ‘ Hortus Medicus Edinburgensis,’ published by Sutherland in 1683. It is therefore probable that the potato had been introduced as a curiosity into some of the gardens about Edinburgh some time before it was brought into full culture by Prentice. But if its management was the same as that recom- mended by so great an authority as Evelyn, the produce was, most probably, of little value. The year 1742, which was long remembered in Scotland as “ the dear year,’’ gave an impulse to the cultivation of the potato. Old people who were still living at the beginning of the present cen- tury, represented the state of things in the summer of 1743 as being dreadful. Many of the destitute wandered in the fields seeking to prolong the misery of existence by devouring the leaves of pease and beans, of sorrel and other wild plants, while not a few perished from absolute want, and still more were car- ried off by those diseases which always follow and aa*