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Rye

This species of grain is much more hardy but incalculably less valuable in every respect than wheat. It has been cultivated from time immemorial, and is supposed to be a native of the Caspian Caucasian desert. In Britain it is very little used as an article of food compared with wheat and oats, though in the North of Europe and in Flanders it forms a principal article of human subsistence, but generally mixed with wheat, and sometimes also with barley. The cultivation of rye does not extend so far north as that of barley, but it grows in regions too cold for wheat, and on soils too poor and sandy for any other grain. Its ripening can also be more confidently depended on in cold regions than that of any other grain. But rye, it should be observed, succeeds best, and is most productive, in a climate where wheat ripens. It delights in sandy soil.