64 VARIETAL CHARACTERS OF -INDIAN WHEATS. 
simultaneously a very large peoportion of the wheat berries themselves. For 
that reason and having regard to the practical certainty of getting some small 
seeds into the bulks grown under commercial conditions, I would not recommend 
the growth of wheats 7 & 4, nor even of Nos. 5 &6 unless there is some other 
characteristic, of which I know nothing, to strongly recommend them. 
In recent years, a considerably increased quantity of Durum (Macaroni) 
wheats have been sold on British markets for ultimate use in bread-making, 
although as the alternative name implies their original or better use is for the 
manufacture of macaroni. Their great and inherent hardness is very different to 
the apparent hardness of your ordinary wheats, in which the hardness is due to 
mere absence of moisture, and in the estimation of millers making flour for bread- 
making purposes, Durum wheats are now, and are likely to be, at any rate for 
many years to come, worth much less money than your ordinary wheats. In all 
wheats, and especially in Durums, uniformity of texture is a most important 
desideratum. Millers in preparing their wheats for milling (the separation of 
husk from kernel) seek to get all wheats in their mixture into one uniform condi- 
tionand with that object prepare some wheats very differently to others, before 
the blending of the various sorts is made. From this it would be obvious that 
growers or dealers in grain should, so far as possible, aim at exporting grain as 
uniform in texture as possible. This remark applies to your ordinary wheats as 
well, and affects my judgment on your samples. The principle of a remark I 
made concerning your dwarf wheats applies also to your Durums, but in another 
way. Our mills are fitted with elaborate systems of sifting machines in which 
the wheats pass through perforations in the sifting medium and large impu- 
rities pass over them. Of course, if millers found any additional commercial 
value for other reasons in very long berried wheats and could get a sufficiently 
large and regular supply, they would make the necessary changes in machinery, 
but such wheat as your No. 3 would pass over standard sieves into or with the 
large impurities, and in this case also, I would not recommend the export to the 
United Kingdom of such wheats for flour milling purposes, unless there be 
some strong recommendation, the existence of which I do not now suspect. 
I note with much interest the cleanness of your samples, that is to say, their 
freedom from dirt, barley, seeds, and other extraneous matter. When I was 
President of the National Association of British and Irish Millers, I attended con- 
ferences of shippers, merchants and millers called to deal with the grave abuses 
which had been introduced into the Indian wheat trade, whereby, so we learned, 
such impurities were deliberately added to wheat with the object of obtaining 
for the sellers a greater monetary return. As a result of the arrangements 
arising out of those conferences, a great improvement has been brought about, 
but [ would like to take this opportunity of remarking that if Indian wheats could 
be bought here regularly as clean and good as your samples, British millers would 
pay better prices than they do for them. Manitoban wheats fetch higher prices 
