52 ALIMENTATION. 



dant in the cereals. What has been said concerning fibrin, 

 as an alimentary principle, is applicable to this substance. 

 Its proportion in vegetables is small, unless we consider as 

 vegetable fibrin, gluten, one of the most abundant and im- 

 portant of the nutritive principles contained in ordinary 

 flour. 1 



A principle may be extracted from beans, peas, and 

 other vegetables of this class, which is thought by many to 

 be identical, in all respects, with caseine, and has been 

 called vegetable caseine. In Longet we find an account of 

 an article of food called tao-foo, made by. the Chinese out of 

 peas, which is apparently identical with cheese. 2 The peas 

 are reduced to a pulp by boiling, the vegetable caseine is co- 

 agulated by rennet, and afterward treated in the same way as 

 the analogous substance manufactured from milk. Vegetable 

 and animal caseine have, as far as we know, identical physio- 

 logical relations. Yegetable caseine is sometimes called legu- 

 mine. It is sparingly soluble in water, is insoluble in alco- 

 hol, is not coagulated by heat, and is precipitated by the 

 mineral acids and some of the mercurial and calcareous salts. 

 It is dissolved by the vegetable acids. 3 



Another substance, supposed by some to be identical 

 with vegetable caseine, is amandine. This is found widely 

 distributed in the vegetable kingdom, but it hardly presents 

 points of distinction from legumine, sufficient to mark it as 

 a distinct principle. 



Gluten. In many of the vegetable grains known as 

 cereals, there exists, in variable proportions, a highly nutri- 

 tive nitrogenized substance called gluten. This is found in 

 great abundance (from 10 to 35 per cent.) in wheat. 4 Its 



1 Gluten is a compound substance, containing several distinct alimentary 

 principles, and cannot be considered strictly as analogous to animal fibrin. 



2 Op. cit., tome L, p. 42. 



3 NYSTEN, Dictionnaire de Medecine, par LITTRE ET ROBIN. Paris, 1865. 

 (Legumine.} 



* PEREIRA, Treatise on Food and Diet. New York, 1843. See table of pro- 



