140 SOT BEANS IN BENGAL, BIHAR AND ORISSA. 



Hsiao chiang is made in the same way, but the ingredients 

 are 1 tou 1 sheng (1 peck and 1 pint) of beans to 1 sheng of maize, 

 to which 5 sheng of salt are added. 



III. Tou-fu, or beancurd — made from green or yellow 

 beans, the first giving greater quantity but poorer quality. The 

 beans are steeped in water until they swell considerably, then 

 ground in a stone mill, and passed through a strainer which 

 retains the epidermis of the beans ; after which they are boiled in 

 a pot, poured off into ajar, and well diluted brine added to them — 

 this being stirred in, causes coagulation of the proteid compound 

 legumin or vegetable casein, and the mixture is ready to be 

 drained off in an hour and cut into blocks for sale." 



Some trials of the value of soy beans as a green vegetable 

 carried out by Mr. Sil at Sabour showed that the pods were 

 unpleasantly fibrous. 



Oil : — The chief use of the oil is for soap-making, and it is 

 for the extraction of the oil for this purpose that the seeds are 

 being imported into England on a large scale. In China (13) 

 the oil is used as an illuminant, as a substitute for lard in cook- 

 ing, though it is inferior to rapeseed and sesamum oil for this 

 purpose, as a lubricant for greasing cart axies, and for water- 

 proofing cloth. 



Cake and Flour : — The llour is already utilized for the manu- 

 facture of biscuits and should prove a valuable food-stuff as it 

 contains a high percentage of nitrogen. The bean cake has 

 given results equal to decorticated cotton cake in a number of 

 feeding trials with milch cows (15). 



10. GENERAL CONCLUSIONS. 



At the present time Soy Beans are grown to a slight extent 

 only in the Darjeeling hills and to no appreciable extent else- 

 where although satisfactory yields have been obtained in the 

 experiments conducted by the Agricultural Department in both 

 these areas. We may ascribe the present unpopular^ of the 

 crop to the following reasons. For export the price offered in 

 Calcutta is not yet sufficiently attractive ; as a food-stuff it is 



