PROCEEDINGS OF THE FARMERS* CLUB. 131 



keep ray cattle in the basement, putting a foot or two of muck 

 under the stalls, in autumn, and removing it in spring. The cel- 

 lar of the basement is to be dug in sand, never needing other than 

 its natural drainage. Having no large stones for these basement 

 walls, can I make them of concrete? The best and cheapest 

 methods of building barns, and making and preserving manure, 

 are subjects worthy the attention of farmers generally; and, if 

 such walls, in a soil like mine, can be built of clay and stone, they 

 ouffht to know it." 



Mr. Solon Kobinson. — You can make concrete walls of lime and 

 gravel; one to five, but not with clay, unless it is very pure and 

 strong or mixed with iron. As for manure cellars, under barns, 

 they are often great nuisances. The plan you propose is the far 

 better. 



Bread MAjKing. 



Mr. S. E. Todd read a letter from a " farmer's wife," about 

 bread making, and the difference in quality and wholsomeness of 

 hop-3^east bread over that made by milk-rising or salt-rising. 



The chairman, Prof. Tillman, said in answer to these queries : 

 "When the changing nitrogenous material in the gluten of the 

 flour comes in contact with the saccharine matter, the compounds, 

 alcohol and carbonic acid, are broken up ; and the carbonic acid 

 gas, in its endeavor to escape from the mass, is retained by the 

 expansion of the tenacious gluten, in the form of round globules, 

 which are disseminated through all the dough. If, therefore, the 

 process of fermentation be allowed to go on long enough, lactic 

 and acetic fermentation will also set in, producing lactic and acetic 

 acid, which will shortly accumulate so largely as to render the 

 entire mass unfit for bread. The reason why hop rising is superior 

 to milk rising for making bread is found in the fact that the lupulin 

 in the hop checks the rapid decomposition of the albuminous matter 

 contained in the gluteu of the dough, and also the decomposition 

 of the saccharine matter, prior to the commencement of the acetous 

 fermentation." 



Mr. S. E. Todd. — The entire subject of bread making is replete 

 with interest. No plausible reason can be assigned why one kind 

 of bread is more healthful for one person than that which was 

 made with different yeast. Some good livers relish bread made 

 with hop yeast, and cannot like bread the dough of which Was 

 raised v/ith milk-rising. And the opposite of this is as frequently 



