334 GRAMINACEJE. 



are unfit for Wheat. In former times it was much cultivated 

 in England and called " Meslin," from a word meaning mixed, 

 because this grain is the best when mingled with other grains. 

 Excellent bread is made of one-third of Eye-meal to two-thirds 

 of Wheat, and a small quantity mixed with coarse flour makes 

 the best brown bread. It is very much cultivated in Holland, 

 where it forms as important an ingredient in gin as our malt 

 does in beer. In England it is mostly sown as a green crop, 

 and fed-off early in the spring with sheep. The land will beal* 

 a crop of Turnips or Potatoes afterwards. It is subject to the 

 same diseases as Wheat, and the ergot affects it to a much 

 greater extent. In a period of famine in France the starving 

 poor in one district were driven to eat the ergotted Eye. All 

 who ate it became miserably ill, their limbs rotting off before 

 death. At first this was supposed to be the effect of witch- 

 craft ; but, experiments having been made with ergotted Bye 

 upon animals, it was at length satisfactorily proved that the 

 fungus -poisoned corn was the cause of the malady. It swells 

 the grain to twice its natural length, causing it to assume the 

 form of a black horn. 



The Millet cereals, both those belonging to the Soft-grasses 

 and to the Panick-grasses, we have already considered, so that 

 the only important foreign cereals which remain to be described 

 are the Rice and Sugar Cane. 



The Eice family has two glumes to each flower, two nearly 

 equal paleae, six stamens, and two styles. 



The common Bice (Or^za sativa), has a diffuse panicle ; it is 

 indigenous about lakes in India. A Bice field is much more 

 prolific than a corn field ; for one acre will produce from thirty 

 to sixty bushels. Bice is extensively cultivated in India, China, 

 and in Spain, as well as in North and South Carolina, and 

 G-eorgia. The best ground for Bice fields is low land by the 

 side of rivers, for they require to be well watered, and in this 

 case they need no manure. The uses of Bice are manifold ; it 

 is the principal food of great numbers in India, and is largely 



