44 On Malting. 



haust the substance of the corn. To prevent this is one of 

 the principal objects in the manufacture of malt, and hence 

 too a just criterion is afforded for estimating the merit of 

 different methods of working ; for that method which will 

 accomplish the full malting of the barley with the least pos- 

 sible root is so far unequivocally the best, because such 

 malt will have expended the least portion of itself on an ob- 

 ject entirely unproductive. Now there is perhaps no one 

 circumstance wherein the Hertfordshire method of malting 

 differs so distinctly from the watering system, as in its short 

 and comparatively small radicle. This may be very clearly 

 collected from many parts of the evidence, for the watering 

 party even seem to have made a merit of it, by endeavouring 

 to show that their own steepings, from the larger quantity 

 of root which they contained, approached and even ran into 

 floor charges far beyond the Hertfordshire steepings ; and 

 they thence endeavoured to infer that a larger opening was 

 left in the latter for fraud, by the introduction and mixing 

 of corn privately steeped. It is indeed certainly true that 

 the Hertfordshire mode of working gives the floor gauges 

 low, and the other high ; but with this the question of fraud 

 has very little to do, for mixing is seldom if ever practised 

 in whole floors ; but the short and small radicle of the one, 

 and long bushy root of the other, are decisive characteris- 

 tics which are admitted by themselves, and which would, in 

 my humble judgment, stamp a decided superiority on the. 

 Hertfordshire malt. 



That the radicle is actually formed from the body of the. 

 barley is too obvious to require any proof, and indeed it is 

 universally admitted to be so ; and as it is afterwards burnt off 

 on the kiln, and becomes mere waste, every particle of mat- 

 ter which it unnecessarily takes from the substance of the 

 corn is just so much loss ; and though this has not been at 

 all adverted to in the inquiry before the committee, it does 

 in fact constitute one of the most important portions of the 

 subject, for it actually is the expenditure of the substance 

 of the barley on the root, by working it too much nut, 

 which is the chief cause why malt manufactured undf>r the 



forcing 



