PREPARATIONS OF MAIZE. 25 



Domestic animals of all kinds are extremely fond of it; and, as is well 

 known, readily fatten upon it, their flesh being at the same time re- 

 markable for its firmness. Both men and horses feeding upon it are 

 very hardy and perform more labor than when feeding on most other 

 kinds of food. The cobbs should be ground with the corn when design- 

 ed for cattle, the advantage being as 3 in 13. Maize when fed to 

 horses should be soaked 12 hours in water, it being then more easily 

 mashed and more nourishing. The wet meal fed to chickens is the 

 very best and most nutritive food, and the grain is equally so to grown 

 fowls. 



Maize eaten in various ways, is wholesome and delicate before the 

 harvest. The tender green ears, stripped of their leaves, are roasted 

 before a quick fire till brown, and the grain eaten with salt and butter. 

 When riper, the ears are boiled, either with or without the leaves, and 

 eaten as above, or cut off' and eaten with kidney beans. The tender 

 grains dried may be kept through the year and eaten with beans, also 

 alone, if soaked some hours in water and boiled. When ripe and 

 hard, it may be soaked during the night in a lye of ashes, then pounded 

 in a mortar, by which the skin is peeled off and the farinaceous part is 

 left whole. This on boiling, swells into a while soft pulp, which is 

 eaten with milk or with butter and sugar. Ground loosely into pieces 

 of the size of rice, winnowed and boiled, it is eaten with fowls, etc. 

 Finely ground and boiled, it is eaten with milk, or as puddings, or 

 baked before the fire on flat erect pieces of iron, as a hasty bread cake 

 or Johnny cake." It is also blended in soups or broths. The grains 

 placed in an iron pot filled with sand and heated hot, burst on stirring 

 the sand, and are then large and white. The whole is then turned 

 into a wire seive, the corn separated, and the sand returned to the pot 

 and the process repeated, if desired. This parched corn is then pow- 

 dered in mortars or eaten otherways. 6 or 8 oz. mixed with water 

 supports a person a day. Our Indians, and the people of the East, 

 travel mostly with this light and nutritious food. 



An oil, almost equal to Olive oil, is extracted from the kernel, which 

 promises to be of much importance, both in the arts and for culinary 

 purposes. It is now obtained in considerable quantities at the West. 



In Mexico, corn is often sowed thick, and the small stalks are cut 

 and served like asparagus, as a dessert. There is said to be a disease 

 of this grain, resembling the ergot of rye, though less serious. All 

 eating of it shed their teeth and hair, and quadrupeds their hoofs ; 

 fowls also, eating of it lay their eggs without shells. Administered 

 medicinally, it is also said to be more powerful than the ergot of rye. 

 Maize, in the Levant, is called Turkey corn ; indeed it might be call- 

 ed the corn of every country, the latitude of which does not exceed 

 46 ; for, next to rice, perhaps, it supplies with food the greatest 

 number of the human race. It is the handsomest and largest of all 

 3 



