32 FOOD-GRAINS OF INDIA. 



as extracted from different grains, is found to vary in the ease 

 with which it is affected by hot water and by those digestive 

 ferments which are capable of dissolving it during its passage 

 through the alimentary tract. 



The proportion of flesh-forming substances, or albuminoids, 

 in different cereals, varies much ranging from 1 8 per cent, 

 in the hardest wheats to 6*5 per cent, in the poorest rice. In 

 different varieties of many, perhaps most cereals, this consti- 

 tuent does not oscillate between very wide limits ; but in wheat 

 the range is very great. In Indian wheat, however, the .limit 

 of variation in the percentage of albuminoid matter does not 

 seem to exceed 6/4 per cent., that is from 10*3 to 167 per cent. 

 There are considerable differences in the albuminoids present 

 in different cereals, the albuminoids of wheat presenting more 

 analogy to animal fibrin, and being more easy to separate and 

 more tenacious, stringy, and elastic when separated from the 

 other constituents of the grain than is the case with other 

 cereals. Upon these peculiarities of wheat-albuminoids depends 

 the power of forming a light vesiculated bread which wheat- 

 flour possesses in an eminent degree. It is usual to calculate 

 the amount of albuminoids in the cereal grains by multiplying 

 the amount of nitrogen which analysis shows to exist in them 

 by the coefficient 6*3. The results thus obtained are always 

 too high, for the cereal grains invariably contain nitrogen in 

 the form of compounds not albuminoid and not possessing the 

 same functions in nourishing the body. But a large number 

 of careful estimations of the actual albuminoids in well-ripened 

 grains of the most familiar cereals has been made, with the 

 result of showing that the amount to be deducted from the 

 total calculated percentages of albuminoids may generally be 

 neglected without serious error. Were such deductions allowed 

 they would amount to from iy 2 to 9 parts from each 100 parts 

 of albuminoids. As in most Indian-grown grains and seeds 

 no such determinations of non-albuminoid nitrogen have been 

 yet made, it would have been impossible to have corrected 

 the figures in the following pages in accordance with the more 



