On Malting. 181 



is thrown nut of the cistern it is kept sixteen or eighteea 

 inches deep, and in that time sweats very much from the 

 heat which is allowed to accumulate in ii, and when the root 

 is quite out it is thrown abroad as a floor. The root runs out 

 Straight, and I generally found it on the fourth day as long, 

 and in many instances longer, than it was in Hertfordshire 

 on the eighth day. After much of the cistern water had 

 been thus sweated to the outside of the corn, and the latter 

 had been spread out very thin, a great part of it was carried 

 off by evaporation, insomuch that, on the ninth day, the 

 root which was so forward on the fourth, was gone back in 

 its vegetation, and in many instances become flaccid and 

 brown ; and it would certainly have been impracticable to 

 carry such grain forwards to the kiln in a proper state of 

 malting without watering it ; and this accordingly was done 

 as soon as the legal period of restriction was expired. The 

 operation as I saw it performed was done at three separate 

 sprinklings, turning over the corn each time, and then 

 leaving it undisturbed from twelve to eighteen hours, ac- 

 cording to the weather; in some cases the operation is re- 

 peated, and in others not. The water thus thrown upon the 

 grain generally drives out a second root, not from the same 

 aperture as the old one, but by the side of it, and this blows 

 out the end of the corn, and makes an increase in the mea- 

 sure of the malt ; and so very material is this considered, 

 that the workmen, in turning the floors, tumble about the 

 wet corn in a way purposely to beat off the old root, and in 

 many cases I was assured they employ a besom to sweep 

 it off. 



To obtain this increase of measure is, most certainly, one 

 of the objects of watering the floors. Before the wet corn 

 can be brought forward to the kiln, most of the water given 

 it on the floor must again be worked out of it, because if it 

 is laid upon the kiln loo moist it will shrink in loo n)uch, 

 and thereby disappoint the maltster of one of the objc'cts 

 which he had in view, the increase of measure in the bushel ; 

 and the circumstance of being obliged again to v^/ork the 

 water out of the grain, keeps it several days longer from the 

 kiln than would otherwise happen, but yet it is very far from 

 M 3 being 



