CHAPTER I. 



The Cerealia, or Corn-Plant, generally. 



ALL vegetable productions which afford food, con- 

 tain, in some proportion or other, a farinaceous * or 

 non-fibrous and granular substance, which, when 

 dried, may be ground or pounded into flour or meal, 

 and which, if boiled in water, will form with it a 

 pulpy substance. This farinaceous constituent of 

 esculent vegetables, the presence of which in some 

 portion appears necessary to the growth of all plants, 

 and which is in perfection only when the plant, of 

 which it forms a part, has attained maturity, has 

 less of an organized structure than is discernible in 

 the membranous and fibrous portions of vegetable 

 growth. In regard to its consistency, this farinace- 

 ous principle is found to take a wide range, existing 

 sometimes in the form of an almost limpid fluid, and 

 thence through different degrees of acquiring con- 

 sistency, called inspissation, until, in some cases, its 

 hardness approaches to that of woody fibre. 



Those vegetable substances which contain the 

 largest proportion of farinaceous matter, are on that 

 account the best adapted for human food. Of this 

 kind are seeds and tubers, "f when they are ripe, or 

 have attained their full growth. Many plants yielding 

 these are annuals : others, with the exception of their 

 seeds or tubers, die in the autumn, and leave these 



* From farina, meal. 



* A tuber is an underground stem, distended by the deposit 

 of farinaceous matter. 



