358 APPENDIX. 



removed. In this manner an industrious man will shell from 

 twenty to twenty-five bushels per day. Two bushels of ears 

 will yield one bushel of shelled corn. The rude method 

 above described has in some places yielded to a simple machine, 

 which expedites the work. 



Of the advantages and uses of Indian corn we have had many 

 notices within the last twelve months, but perhaps none have 

 greatly added to the testimony given long ago by Dr. franklin. 

 He says, " It is remarked in North America that the English 

 farmers when they first arrive there, finding a soil and climate 

 proper for the husbandry they have been accustomed to, and 

 particularly suitable for raising wheat, despise and neglect the 

 culture of Indian corn ; but observing the advantage it affords 

 their neighbours, the older inhabitants, they by degrees get 

 more and more into the practice of raising it ; and the face of 

 the country shows from time to time that the culture of that 

 grain goes on visibly augmenting. 



" The inducements are the many different ways in which it 

 may be prepared, so as to afford a wholesome and pleasing 

 nourishment to men and other animals. First, the family can 

 begin to make use of it before the time of full harvest ; for the 

 tender green ears, stripped of their leaves, and roasted by a 

 quick fire till the grain is brown, and eaten with a little salt or 

 butter, are a delicacy. Secondly, when the grain is riper and 

 harder, the ears, boiled in their leaves and eaten with butter, 

 are also good and agreeable food. The tender green grains 

 dried, kept all the year, and mixed with green haricots (kidney- 

 beans) also dried, make at anytime a pleasing dish, being first 

 soaked some hours in water and then boiled. When the grain 

 is ripe and hard, there are also several ways of using it. One 

 is to soak it all night in a lessive or lye, and then pound it in 

 a large wooden mortar, with a wooden pestle ; the skin of each 

 grain is by that means skinned off, and the farinaceous part 

 left whole, which, being boiled, swells into a white soft pulp, 

 and eaten with milk, or with butter and sugar, is delicious. 

 The dry grain is also sometimes ground loosely, so as to be 

 broken into pieces of the size of rice, and being winnowed to 

 separate the bran, it is then boiled and eaten with turkey or 

 other fowl, as rice. Ground into a finer meal, they make of it, 

 by boiling, a hasty pudding or bouilli, to be eaten with milk or 

 with butter and sugar : this resembles what the Italians call 

 polenta. They make of the same meal, with water and salt, a 

 hasty cake, which, being stuck against a hoe or other fiat iron, 

 is placed erect before the fire, and so baked to be used as bread. 



