256 SELECTIONS FROM ADDRESSES. 



pertained. And thus, the surprise of the proprietor's visitors 

 and friends may easily be conjectured, when they found that, 

 the warmer the day, the colder was their reception ! 



But is there no need of chemistry within the farmer's house ? 

 A little instruction in the doctrine of chimney-draughts, and in 

 the laws which regulate the radiation of heat, would not only be 

 a specific for many a smoky apartment, but would very nearly 

 overturn the present economy of open fire-places and ovens. 

 And suffer me to ask, if we do not still hear of the caprices of 

 soap-making, and failures in the making of palatable bread. 

 We would not be thought mealy-mouthed ; but are there no ex- 

 ceptions to mealy potatoes on the family table 1 Does the house- 

 keeper, who essays the making of sweetmeats, and who has 

 scrupulously observed the proportions of fruit and sugar, not 

 sometimes find, to her surprise, that no jelly crowns the experi- 

 ment? But the greatest case of defective knowledge in domes- 

 tic life, undoubtedly relates to the use of bolted flour, instead of 

 the whole ground or unsifted meal ; since the latter surpasses 

 the former, by one half, in all the purposes of nutriment, and 

 fully equals it in agreeableness of flavor.* If the fastidious in- 

 habitants of the city will still adhere to that preparation of the 

 cereals, which consists of little else than pure starch, to the re- 

 jection, of those more precious constituents which every chemist 

 knows to be indispensable for imparting firmness to the muscle, 

 fullness to the outline, and strength to the bone, why, of course, 

 there is no help for this folly; unless perhaps it be for them to 

 take still another portion of starch, in the form of buckram, and, 

 as a substitute for live bones, to go on borrowing from the whale, 

 in order to prop themselves into shape ; but let us never be told 

 of farmers, who are willing to do such violence to home-spun 

 common sense, as to banish the good old-fashioned brown loaf, 

 together with unbolted meal cakes and puddings in all their sim- 

 ple and delicious forms. 



Did the time allow, we might go on to particularize other de- 

 partments of science, at present but little appreciated by the 

 farmer; such, for instance, as those connected with meteorology, 



* See Prof. Johnston's paper on the chemical composition of unbolted, or whole-ground 

 meal, in a late number of the London Chemist. 



