THE GRAINS 



515 



wheat, oats, rye, barley, rice, and Indian corn. Most of the 

 cereals are grass-like herbs of moderate height, but corn varies 

 much in size, from some of the dwarf varieties of pop corn 

 not more than two feet high to the twenty-foot field corn of 

 the rich river bottoms of the Middle West. All the grains have 

 many varieties, but these are most familiar in the various sorts 

 of wheat hard, soft, red, white, bearded, beardless, and so on 

 and in the many qualities of grain of Indian corn (see 

 Chapter XL). 



Wheat is the most important of the cereals, on account of 

 its palatableness, high food value, and ready digestibility. None 



FIG. 383. A cornfield in Missouri 

 After Frye 



of the other grains yield a flour which is as well adapted for 

 bread making as wheat flour. Eice is readily digestible, but is 

 inferior to most grains in the relative proportion of proteids to 

 other ingredients ; and oats, rye, barley, and Indian corn, as usu- 

 ally prepared, are somewhat difficult of digestion. Corn meal 

 when imperfectly cooked, and eaten to the exclusion of other 

 food, has often given rise in northern Italy to a much-dreaded 

 disease known as pellagra. 



The United States is the leading wheat- and corn-raising 

 country, producing more than one fourth of the total world's 

 crop of the former grain and four fifths of the latter. 



