Barley 



21 



DRYING MACARONI 



BARLEY 



Barley is a most important 

 cereal crop, and the hardi- 

 ness of the plant enables it 

 to be cultivated in higher 

 latitudes than any other 

 cereal. Its cultivation, how- 

 ever, is by no means confined 

 to cold regions, for among 

 some of the most important 

 barley-producing countries 

 of the world are France and 

 Turkey. 



As is almost invariably 

 the case with plants which 

 have been long cultivated 

 by man, the number of vari- 

 eties existing at the present 



day is very great. They are generally reduced by botanists, however, to four species, viz., 

 (1) Common or two-rowed barley (Hordeum distichum) ; (2) Bigg or BevefHordeum vulgar e) ; 

 (3) Six-rowed barley (H. hexastichum) ; and (4) Fan or battledore barley (H. zeocriton). 



As a cultivated cereal, barley is of great antiquity, and Pliny has placed on record his 

 opinion that it is the most ancient foodstuff of man, a statement to which modern research 

 lends considerable support, for in the Lake Dwellings of Switzerland, which belong to the 

 Stone Age, no less than three kinds of barley have been discovered, and identified by Professor 

 Heer as varieties of the two-rowed and six-rowed forms mentioned above. Up to within 

 comparatively recent years barley formed an important article of food in northern regions, 

 but the ever-increasing use of wheat has supplanted it to a very considerable extent in the 

 more prosperous countries, whose inhabitants prefer the more palatable and dainty bread 

 made from wheaten flour. 

 Nevertheless, the nutritive 

 value of barley is considerable, 

 the chief objection to its use 

 being the comparative poverty 

 in gluten, the valuable com- 

 pound found abundantly in 

 wheat, which enables the 

 flour to yield a vesiculated 

 bread. 



In Britain the use of barley 

 as a bread corn is confined 

 to Scotland, where unleavened 

 barley cakes still form an ar- 

 ticle of food of the peasant 

 class, though far less than in 

 former times. For this purpose 

 the barley is passed between 

 the rollers of a mill to remove 

 the outer hard cuticle from the 

 grain, which issues from the drying macaroni 



