354 



The Journal of Heredity 



a limiled amount of water. We are 

 accustomed to speak of the wheat seed 

 as having a suspended vitality, but this 

 is only a rough approximation to the 

 truth. The fact is that its cells are 

 living and have indeed accomplished 

 only one-half of iheir allotted life. The 

 other half is connected with the trans- 

 ference of their material to the embryo 

 as needed. The seed, therefore, has its 

 living activities, and, though these are 

 not as rapid as those of the ordinary 

 plant cell, it is impossible to point out 

 any other essential difference. Their 

 rate of life is retarded, not suspended, 

 as we ordinarily say, for if the seed be 

 kept dry it goes on living for a number 

 of years, according to the kind of seed, 

 and then dies."' 



From this it is evident that flour, as 

 it comes from the mill, is also alive. 

 Most of the flour -cells will have been 

 crushed, but some of them will pass 

 through the rollers unbroken, thanks to 

 their small size. Whether whole or 

 crushed, they are alive. Wheat flour 



is living matter, just as much as is a raw 

 egg or oyster, for some time after it is 

 made, until it has ripened, as the millers 

 say, or died, as a biologist would put it.- 



Different wheats contain different 

 amounts of protoplasm. The durum 

 wheats, of which macaroni is made, are 

 notably rich in this resjxct — so much 

 so that they do not bake up well into 

 bread, unless given spx'cial treatment. 



It has been found that the flour-cells 

 in the interior of the seed contain the 

 smallest amount of protein or gluten 

 (about 7%), while the amount increases 

 in cells nearer the surface, until those 

 just under the bran contain as much as 

 16 or 17%. Unfortunately, when ordin- 

 ary white flour is milled, the richest 

 gluten cells are thrown out with the 

 bran and what is in many ways the 

 most valuable part of the grain is thus 

 eliminated. Hence the great superi- 

 ority, as a body-building food for man, 

 of war bread or any whole-wheat bread 

 in which much if not all of the l^ran is 

 included. 



The Classical Example of Consanguineous Marriage 



The Ptolemies, who ruled Egypt for 

 several centuries, wanted to keep the 

 throne in the family, and hence practiced 

 a system of intermating which has long 

 been the classical evidence that con- 

 sanguineous marriage is not necessarily 

 followed by immediate evil effects. The 

 following fragment of the genealogy of 

 Cleopatra VII (mistress of Julius Caesar 

 and Marc Antony), is condensed from 

 Weigall's Life and Times of Cleopatra 

 (1914), and shoWs an amount of con- 

 tinued inbreeding that has never been 

 surpassed in recorded history, and yet 

 did not seem to produce any striking 

 evil results. The ruler's consort is 

 named, only when the two were 

 related. The consanguineous marriages 

 shown in this line of descent are by no 

 means the only ones of the kind that 

 took place in the family, many like them 

 being found in collateral lines. 



Ptolemy I 

 Ptolemy II 



Ptolemy III m. Bernice II, his half- 



I cousin. 

 Ptolemy IV m. Arsinoc III, his full 



I sister. 

 Ptolemv V 



I 

 Ptolemy VII m. Cleopatra II, his 



I full sister. 

 Cleopatra III m. Ptolemy IX (])ro. 



I of VII). her uncle. 

 Ptolemy X m. Cleopatra IV, his full 



1 sister. 



Bernice II m. Ptolemy XI (bro. of 



I X), her uncle. 

 Ptolemy XII, d. without issue, suc- 

 ceeded by his uncle, 

 -Ptolemv XIII 



Cleopatra \'I1 



' From an afklress by Dr. Co1j1> at the Bakers' Institute, Milwaukee, 1908; i)rintecl in thir- 

 teenth biennial rejjort of the Bureau of Labor and Industrial Statistics, Pt. v, Madison, Wis., 

 1908, pp. 7.^5 747. 



' Under favorable atmospheric conditions, it may live for six months or more. Formerly 

 the millers hastened its death by controlling the tem])eraturc and moisture; now they electrocute 

 it, thus "ripening" it without delay. 



