Vegetable substances used for the food of man / [Edwin Lankester. Revised and partly rewritten].

  • Edwin Lankester
Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Vegetable substances used for the food of man / [Edwin Lankester. Revised and partly rewritten]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    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 ot the inhabitants was made to form part of their sustenance, that in after-life, and wlien he had returned from a jiro- tracted residence 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 the members of his family could only look with disgust. 1 Of all the cerealia, maize is the least subject to disease. : Blight, mildew, or rust, are unknown to it. It is never i liable to be beaten down by rain, or by the most violent i storms of wintl ; and in climates and seasons which are 1 favourable to its growth and maturity, the only enemies . which the maize farmer has to dread are insects in the |. early stages, and birds in the later periods of its culti- , vation. 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 the central parts of America; and there can be no doubt of its being a native of those regions. In favourable situations it has a very consider- able growth, attaining to the height of from seven to ten feet; in some cases it has acquired the gigantic height of I fourteen feet, without in any way impairing its productive I pow'cr. Its spike, or ear, is eight or ten inches in length, I and five or six inches in circumfei'cncc. The ))lant gene- rally sends out one, two, or more suckers from the bottom ' of the stalk ; but these it is advisable to remove, not only as they di'avv away ]iart of the nourishment w Inch should go to siqiport the main stalk, but because the ears which the suckers bear ripen at later periods than (he others, and the harvest eould not all lie simultaneously .secured in the projiercst state of maturity. I his variety will rarely come to maturity in northern idimates, and could never be scicuroly relied on for a crop n any [lart ot Europe. In the Mexican states, where I his grain is know n by (he name of 'Tlnotiili, tbere arc lew parts of either the lower districts—tiara raliente— 1 r -1
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