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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    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 multiplied into a j>eck ot grains. In i\Iay of the following year, about a quart of seed w as sown upon a piece of ground twenty paces long and half as liroad, which space, it was soon apparent, was far too circumscribed for the quantity of seed. The stalks came up very close, and were interwoven with I each other, reaching scarcely to the height of five feet, 1 and the ears were much smaller than those of the pre- ceding year, 'i'he produce, however, was seven pecks, or equivalent to fifty-si.x ibr one. In the next year thirty square rods of land were sowed with half a peck, of the siied. Here again the millet came up far too thick, being almost as much crowded, from its greater E tillering, as it was in the preceding year ; notwitlistand- |I ing which the produce was so great that twenty bushels I. were harvested, being a return of one hundred and sixty I for one, and at the rate of more than one hundred 1 bushels to the acre. M. 'rschiii'eli was of opinion that ■ ten pounds of seed would jirovc an ample allowance for an acre of ground, and that greater sjiaec being thus allowed for the individual ])lants, the proportion lietween the quantities sown and harvested would be still more favourable. It does not ajipear tliat millet has ever been suljjeeted to the system of drill husbandry, although the results here given seem to point out that system as being peeuliarly ap))licable to its cultivation. Sorglium is cultivated largely in some ])arts of China and in Cochin Cliina. In England the autumn is rarely sufficiently dry and warm I'or ripening its seeds, other- wise the plant might prove ttseful in .some poor and light soils, the produce of whieh is ordinarily insufficitmt to repay' the greater expense attendant upon the cultivation ot other grain. Sorghum was raised in this country as a rare ph^it, in the gartlen of John Cerarde, as early as'l 59G. I he golden-coloured millet-seeds seen in our grocers’ shops are the |)roducc of the iSori/liiim snccluiratxim^ or
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