India in 1887 as seen by Robert Wallace / [Robert Wallace].

  • Robert Wallace
Date:
1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: India in 1887 as seen by Robert Wallace / [Robert Wallace]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    an advantage to the farmer in the way of supplying cheap food for his stock. These foods, however, arc not to be adopted without caution. No less than two diseases in horses arc attribut- able to gram. The one may be called Principal Williams’s Manchester Horse Disease, a blood poison which I believe to be identical with the anthrax of India. The other is a nerve disease, described by Principal M'Call, of Glasgow, in which the tongue becomes paralyzed. The impurities in Indian wheat when it arrives in this country have unquestionably kept down its price in the British market. The presence of such seeds as peas, gram, and barley is accounted for by wheat being grown as a mixed crop. Properly constructed cleaning machines can extract these and what remains of broken straw ; but the most objectionable impurities—viz., lumps of hard clay, powdery earth, and small stones—though capable of being removed, are more difficult to get quit of. Wheat Cleaning.— I am indebted to Dell & Son of London for the following particulars relating to their system of cleaning Indian wheat. It would appear that perhaps five-sixths of the Indian wheat used by the south country millers is cleaned without washing, as washing, in their opinion, though it improves the colour (whitens the flour), decreases the strength of Indian wheat, which, as we have already seen, is originally defective in this particular. In the north of England, again, nearly all the Indian wheat used is washed, on account of strength not being there such an important market quality as colour. Hard wheats are so dry that it is necessary to supply moisture before grinding under any circumstances. Wheat which has been properly washed and dried is improved in keeping quality ; and, what is most interest- ing, a truly hard wheat, by the process of washing and drying described below, can be converted in every respect, 2 K
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