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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    ■57 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, trans- parent, and apparently encompassed by a thin membrane. The cause of this disease has been held by some investi- gators to originate in tbe soil wherein the grain is sown ; others have attributed it to the growth of a fungus within the ear; while others again have aflSrnied that it is owing to a diseased state of the seed whence the plant is pro- duced. The result of various exjrerimonts conducted with different seeds sown in the same s]jot, and subjected to the same culture, appears 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 than fifty-six pounds, and the best as seldom exceed sixty-two pounds. A bushel of wheat of the average weight will yield, on being ground. Of bread flour 47 pounds. fine pollard . . 4^ coarse pollard . . 4 bran . . . *23 11 ,, Loss of ■weight in the processes of grinding and dressing 0 *• >> GO „ In estimating tbe value of the flour of wheat as an article of diet, regard must be had to its com])osition. It will be seen from the table before given that the pro- portion of the nitrogenous or azotised secretions to the rarbonaceous or non-azotised, is as one to four; and Liebig calculates that this is about the proportion which these secretions should bear to each other, however
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