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CAPERS, TRUE AND SPURIOUS KINDS

XIX. THE TAMARIND I. Flour and Its Manufacture.

RIGINALLY the word "flour" was used only to designate the bolted flour of wheat. Rye, barley, oats, buckwheat and corn were more coarsely ground, and their products were called meal. Improvements in milling have now so changed the nomenclature, that the products of wheat, rye and buckwheat are now also called flour. Corn-meal and oatmeal are the only meals, so called, in the United States, though, in some parts of Europe, and in Asia and Africa, barley is ground into meal. The grades of wheat flour are numerous under what is known as the " patent process," by which wheat, often being separated from its bran, is reduced by successive operations to the requisite fineness. It is not ground by crushing as formerly, but by granulating. Wheat and rye are separable into bran, shorts, middlings, fine, superfine and extra flour. There are several patent processes in successful use in the manufacture of flour, and the increased product, per bushel, has driven most of the ordinary mills to the wall; so that now the farmer often finds it cheaper to sell his wheat and buy his flour than to have it ground at country mills. The principal grades of flour are: Fine, Superfine, Family, and XX, XXX and XXXX extras; and every great mill has its own special brand of superior flour. II. Rye and Its Products.

RYE flour is seldom used alone for bread, but is mixed with fine corn-meal 01 wheat flour. Thus used it makes a moist bread, from the quantity of gluten it contains. Rye and Indian bread is much used in cities for breakfast. It requires long baking, and hence is seldom prepared except by regular bakers. It was formerly much used ground, as a portion of the cut feed for horses. Its principal use now, in the United States, is in the manufacture of whiskey. [437] Rye is not generally sown as a field crop On sandy land considerable quantities are raised, the product being white and in every way better than that of mucky soils. The crop, however, is large, and our exports are considerable. The crop of 1881 was 20,704,950 bushels, being less than that of any year since 1876. In 1878 the largest crop of rye ever known in the country was produced, being 25,843,790 bushels. The average value of this grain in 1881 was 93.3 cents per bushel, the average yield 11.6 bushels per acre, and the average value $10.82 per acre. The average yield per acre for the last eleven years was 13.9 bushels and the average price for the same period was 72.2 cents per bushel.

III. Barley and its Products.

BARLEY is not used for bread in the United States, but it is an important and valuable crop, immense quantities being used in the manufacture of ale and beer. Pearled barley is manufactured to a limited extent. In this process the barley is first hulled and then rounded by the attrition of machinery. California, New York and Wisconsin produce more than half the annual crop. The crop for 1882 was 45,000,000 bushels-an average of 23.5 bushels per acre, a greater yield than any previous year, except in 1880, when the yield was 45,165,346 bushels, with an average of 24.5 bushels per acre. The average price for the last eleven years is 73.2 cents per bushel; the average yearly price ranging from 58.9 to 92.1 cents per bushel. IV. Oats and Their Products.

OATS are every year more and more used as food in the shape of oatmeal. The grain is kiln-dried, hulled, and then broken or granulated in a peculiar mill. The best oatmeal is that prepared by partial cooking, again dried, so that its preparation for puddings (mush) requires only ten to fifteen minutes. The yield of oats in the United States in 1862 was 480,000,000 bushels, the largest yield ever known. Illinois, Iowa, New York, Wisconsin, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Kansas are the States of largest production. The average produce per acre for the last eleven years was 27.6 bushels per acre. Certain fields produced over one hundred bushels per acre. V. Maize and Its Products.

THIS is the most important grain crop of the United States. As human food it ranks high, its various products thus used being meal, hominy, samp, hulled corn, farina and other preparations. Corn is also the great stock-feeding grain. The starch of commerce is manufactured from it. It is the principal agent in the production of alcohol, and many millions of bushels are now annually used in the manufacture of glucose (corn sugar). The Mississippi Valley is the great corn-producing region of the world, no other country seeming to have such combined capabilities of soil and climate. In 1882, the States north of Kentucky and west of Pennsylvania produced 1,250,000,000 of the total crop of 1,680,000,000 bushels. VI. Beans and Peas and Their Products.

BEANS and peas in their fully ripened and dry state form no insignificant article of the world's commerce and food supply. Beans are known commercially only in 3 their natural state, the portion ground into bean-meal being insignificant.

Peas, however, are found in a variety of forms, but principally as split peas (divested of the skin and halved), and as pea-meal. The trade in canned green peas is yearly assuming larger and larger proportions. The production of dried peas for shipment is confined entirely to the most northerly portions of the United States and to Canada, the ravages of the pea-beetle, or pea-weevil (Brucus pisi), incorrectly called pea-bugs, in the regions south of the latitude named, preventing the production of perfect ripened seeds. The great bulk of the split peas of commerce come from England and Scotland, whose climates are favorable to the crop. Two cuts are given showing the germination of the bean and the pea, as companion pictures, and as a lesson in botany. In the case of beans, the two lobes of the seed, in germinating, are thrust above ground, thus forming the first leaves of the plant, and upon which it is supported until the roots are enabled to draw nourishment from the earth. In the case of peas, the shoot is thrust upwards, forming true leaves at once, the seed remaining below the surface. 2