VINEGAR. 173 
rose color, which may, or may not, militate against its 
general introduction. He made from the starch at diffe- 
rent times bread and cakes, and in the different cases 
varied success, some being palatable and others not. 
The flour of the sorgho is of an inferior quality as com- 
pared with wheat flour, and others of the finer grains, 
and any mixture of that with wheat flour is a fraud upon 
the stomach, giving a quantity of inferior aliment with 
an accompaning bribe of a better one, as quack physicians 
will make palatable to their patients nauseous pills by 
surrounding them with a coating of sugar. In speaking, 
however, of starch and the various forms of food to be 
made from the Chinese Sugar Cane, I would not be 
understood as embracing in the same category those 
which the imphee may furnish, for, because of the absence 
of any coloring matter from its hull, the peculiar plump- 
ness of the seed, and the large quantity of starch found to 
be present, I have reason to believe that it will indeed 
be a valuable acquisition, and its culture be duly under- 
taken with this simple object inview. Be that as it may, 
we cannot alter the composition of the starch, nor of the 
other components of the sugar. Whither tinted rose 
color, or as white asthe driven snow, it still will have its 
own unchanging proportions of carbon, oxygen, and hy- 
drogen, which will represent a certain nutritive value, and 
for animals it cannot but prove, as indeed experience has 
already proved it to be, a very excellent fodder crop. 
Madinier says, at page 10, that the seed contains 10 to 
12 per cent. of nitrogenous matter—eluten—and about 
60 per cent. of starch, which would make it, so far as the 
proportions of nitrogen are concerned, to resemble our 
