BOOK XVIII. XX. 88-92 



pounds of bread, that of the Italian kind two or three 

 pounds more, in the case of bread baked in a tin— for 

 loaves baked in the oven they add two pounds in 

 either kind of wheat. 



' Hard ' flour" is niade from hard wheat, the most 

 highly esteemed coming from Africa. A fair return is 

 half a peck from a peck with five sixteenths of special 

 flour — that is the name given in the case of Jiard wheat 

 to what in common wlieat is called the ' flower ' ; this is 

 used in copper works and paper mills — and in addi- 

 tion four sixteenths of second quahty flour and the 

 same amount of bran, but from a peck of ' hard ' flour 

 22 pounds of bread and from a peck of flower of 

 wheat 16 pounds. The price for this when the 

 market rate is moderate is 40 asses a peck for flour, 

 8 asses more for ' hard ' flour and twice as much for 

 bolted common wheat. There is also another distinc- 

 tion, that when bolted a single time it gives 17 pounds 

 of bread, when twice 18, when three times 19^, and 

 2^ pounds of second quality bread, the same amount 

 ofshorts and six sixteenths of V)ran. 



Common wheat never ripens evenly, and yet no corn Common 

 crop is less able to stand delay as, owing to its "''<""< "''^ 

 delicacy of structure, the ears that have ripened 

 shed their grain at once. But it is less exposed 

 to danger in the straw than other cereals, because 

 it always has the ear on a straiglit stalk and it 

 does not hold dew to cause rust. Best emmer makes 

 the sweetest bread ; the grain itself is of closer 

 fibre than ordinaiy emmer and the ear is at once larger 

 and heavier : a peck of the grain seldom fails to 

 make 16 pounds. In Greece it is diflicult to thresh 

 and consc^quentlv Homer'' speaks of it as being 

 fed to cattle — for his word oli/ra mcans this grain ; 



247 



