RYE. 53 



duced into England many ages ago. There are two 

 varieties of this species, occasioned more probably by 

 difference of culture than by any inherent variance 

 in the plants: one is known as winter and the other 

 as spring rye. 



It was formerly usual to sow rye together with an 

 early kind of wheat. The harvested grain, thus 

 necessarily intermixed, was termed meslin, from 

 miscellanea: it also obtained the name of tnung- 

 corn, corruptly from monk-corn, because bread made 

 with it was commonly eaten in monasteries. 



With the exception of wheat, rye contains a greater 

 proportion of gluten than any other of the cereal 

 grains, to which fact is owing its capability of 

 being converted into a spongy bread. It contains, 

 likewise, nearly five parts in every hundred of ready- 

 formed saccharine matter, and is in consequence 

 easily convertible into malt, and thence into beer 

 or ardent spirit; but the produce of this last is so 

 small, in comparison with that of malted barley, 

 as to offer no inducement for its employment to that 

 purpose. Rye has a strong tendency to pass rapidly 

 from the vinous to the acetous state of fermentation, 

 and whenever that circumstance has intervened, it 

 would be vain to attempt either to brew or to distil it. 

 Unmalted rye meal is mixed in Holland with barley 

 malt, in the proportion of two parts by weight of 

 the former, with one part of the latter, and the whole 

 being fermented together forms the wash whence is 

 distilled all the grain spirit produced in that country, 

 and known throughout Europe as Hollands Geneva. 

 There must, however, be some circumstances of a 

 peculiar nature connected with the process, as con- 

 ducted by the Dutch distillers, since no attempts made 

 elsewhere have ever been successful in obtaining a 

 spirit having the same good qualities. 



Rye is the common bread-corn in all the sandy 

 VOL. xv. 5* 



