86 
A Grain of Barley. 
(WiTH FIVE PLATES.) 
By Horace T. Brown; F.G.S., F.C.S., F.I.C. 
(Presidential Address, delivered November 2nd, 1888.) 
HA HEN, for the second time, you did me the honour of 
electing me your President, and it became once more 
necessary for me to prepare an Annual Address, I 
thought I could not do better than select as my 
subject, ‘‘A Grain of Barley,” for I considered that if it were 
possible anywhere in the world to arouse interest in such a 
common-place subject, it ought to be here, since it is not too 
much to say that this small and insignificant barley-corn has, 
in its collective form, a greater importance for our community 
than for any other, and that without it, our thriving town, 
with its forty to fifty thousand inhabitants, would probably not 
have emerged from the primitive state of a country hamlet. 
I have no intention of giving you this evening a disserta- 
tion upon barley-growing, or upon malting, but I shall confine 
my remarks as far as possible to a short sketch of the struc- 
ture and development of this wonderful little grain, and of 
the relation which its various parts bear to those of the fruits 
and seeds of the flowering plants generally; and shall in- 
cidentally touch upon some of the chemical changes which 
attend its growth and development. 
My remarks will be in the main addressed to those who 
