164 CHIEF NUTRITIVE PLANTS OF THE TORRID ZONE 



" It is remarked in North America that the English farmers, 

 when they first arrived there, finding a soil and climate proper 

 for the husbandry they have been accustomed to, and particularly 

 suitable for raising wheat, they despise and neglect the cultur. 

 of maize or Indian corn ; but, observing the advantage it afi'ords 

 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 grain dried 

 may be kept all the year, and, mixed with green kidney beans, 

 also dried, make at any time 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 oflf, and the farinaceous part left whole, which, 

 being boiled, swells into a white soft pulp, and, eaten with millc 

 or with butter and sugar, is delicious. The dry grain is als<^ 

 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 turkies or other fowls as rice. Grround 

 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, that 

 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 flat-iron, is placed erect before the fire, 

 and so baked, to be used as bread. They also parch it in this 

 manner. An iron pot is filled with sand, and set on the fire till 

 the sand is very hot. Two or three pounds of the grain are 

 then thrown in, and well mixed with the sand by stirring. Each 

 grain bursts and throws out a white substance of twice its 



