CONSTANT COOKINa REQUIRED BY BUCKWHEAT. 81 



of misery, it cannot be a desirable thing to see it become 

 the staple food of any population.* 



Another consideration which may strike the traveller 

 through countries in which buckwheat, the potato, and 

 Indian corn form the staple food of the people, as an 

 important objection to their use, is the constant cooking 

 they require. Wheat, oats, rye, barley, and even pease, 

 can be made into bread which will keep several days, or 

 even weeks. The rye-bread in the north of Europe is 

 in many families baked only once in two or three months. 

 But no method, I believe, is yet known by which a 

 palatable bread, which can be kept for days, can be made 

 of maize, buckwheat, or potatoes. Thus, a constant 

 cooking is required, a constant loss of time in the house- 

 hold, a derangement of order and neatness, and a large 

 waste of fuel. It is chiefly female labour which is 

 expended in this cooking and its attendant duties, but 

 this labour in a well-regulated household is precious, and 

 can be fully employed in other ways, in supplying the 

 wants and contributing to the comforts of a family. 

 This I consider an important economical and social 

 reason why bread-producing grains should be encouraged 

 in a country, rather than maize, buckwheat, or potatoes. 



In many localities through which I passed, in this and 

 my subsequent excursions among the Anglo-Saxon popu- 

 lation of the rural parts of North America, I found poor 

 log- cabins, badly-cultivated fields — dirty with weeds, 

 and disorderly in consequence of many neglects — which 

 light and easy labour would rectify. And while want of 



* lu Spain and in Sardinia the sweet acorn, the seed of the Quercus 

 gramuntia of Linngeus, is eaten as a principal food of the people in 

 certain districts. In Spain they are buried till they lose their astringent 

 taste. In Mara Calagonis, near Cagliai'i, in Southern Sardinia, the 

 miserable inhabitants, about 1100 in number, live chiefly upon this 

 acorn, of which they make bread. They extract the bitterness from the 

 shelled acorns by means of wood-ashes. 



VOL. I. F 



