166 III. COMPOUND COMBUSTIBLES— 



Rye flour, Farina secalis. Used to make either a sweet 

 bread, raising the dough by yeast, or an acid bread by using 

 leaven for that purpose ; this last is cooling, not so nourishing as 

 the former, but more suited to an animal diet. 



Barley flour. Farina hordei. When made into bread with 

 yeast, it requires the dough to be baked very soon after it is made, 

 as it grows sour almost immediately : a paste of barley-meal and 

 water is used to take the hair oft* skins, previous to their being 

 tanned. — Scotch harley-meal. From big, or bear, dark coloured. 

 — Prepared pearl-barley. Pearl barley, highly dried, and then 

 ground ; used to make barley-water and gruel. 



Oatmeal, Farina avenacea. Used to make gruel and bread, 

 resolvent when employed as a poultice. 



Beech mast meal. Is made into bread, but is affirmed to 

 produce hydrophobia. Smiedel. de hydrophobia ex usu frugtum 

 fagi, Erlangen, 1762. 



German rice flour. From German rice, or naked barley, 

 Hordeum zeocriton ; used to thicken soups ; potato starch is 

 sold for it. 



FECULA?. 



Wheat starch, Amylum tritici. From wheat, by treading 

 it in sacks in a current of water ; the water being received in 

 troughs is left to ferment, which, decomposing the saccharine sub- 

 stance, renders the starch that is deposited on standing, very pure 

 and white : friable, easily pulverised, crimp between the fingers, 

 without smell or taste ; demulcent, perhaps astringent ; used for 

 glysiers in diarrhoea, dysentery, &c. — Foreign starch. From the 

 pollard and bran of wheat left after sifting aw^ay about half its 

 bulk of the finer flour : Lubeck. 



Rye starch. Floury, greyish white, scarcely crimp, retains 

 the smell amd taste of the grain ; yields about half its weight of 

 starch. 



Barley starch. Powdery, greyish white, scarcely crimp, 

 retains the smell and taste of the grain ; yields rather more than 

 half its weight of starch. 



Oat starch. Floury, greyish, not crimp, with a weak smell 

 and taste of water gruel. Yields half its weight of starch. 



Arrow root, Fecula sayittaricR^ F. marantcB, Maranta^ 

 P. U. S. From the root of Maranta arundinacea, by pounding 

 or grating it in water, and letting the fecule settle ; when rubbed 

 up smooth with a little cold water, and boiling water poured upon 

 this paste, it dissolves easily, by stirring, into a transparent jelly, 

 without requiring to be boiled ; nutritive ; from the West Indies ; 



