340 [Assembly 



substance in considerable quantity. The former is the ferment: the 

 Jatter undergoes fermentation. 



The subject might be examined to an almost indefinite extent, but 

 your committee will only add that Mr. Staiford's apparatus, when 

 used according to his directions, puts an end to fermentation of every 

 kind, to wit: The flour or meal is placed in the trough containing 

 the cylinder, over the surface of which the flour or meal moves. The 

 steam is admitted into the cylinder and expels the moisture which 

 holds in solution the several fermentative qualities. When the flour 

 or meal has reached the end of the cylinder (a period, in a full sized 

 machine, of about eight minutes) it is ready to drop into vessels 

 where it may be acted upon by cold air for cooling purposes — the 

 process is complete — and the flour or meal is ready to be shipped to 

 any climate, and will keep an indefinite length of time. 



In the year eighteen hundred and thirty-eight one of the under- 

 signed received from a friend a sample of wheat which it was said 

 had been produced from seeds received from Pompeii circulated by 

 the Emperor of Austria through the several ministers of legation at 

 Vienna. Pompeii, we are told, was destroyed partly by an earth- 

 quake, A. D. sixty-three, and in the year seventy-nine was buried by 

 a stream of lava and ashes. The lost city was discovered in seven- 

 teen hundred and forty-eight. In the year eighteen hundred and 

 thirty seven what was supposed to have been a miller's shop was 

 discovered; in the centre of the shop was a heap, which furnished a 

 few bushels of wheat; the wheat was divided among the foreign 

 ministers; by the ministers divided and afterwards sown and produc- 

 ed abundantly: the heap from which the wheat was taken was sur- 

 rounded with lava and ashes in the miller's shop, and to the absence 

 of air and moisture must be attributted its preservation for nearly 

 two thousand years where it had lai.l lava locked in the bowels of 

 the earth: a proof that if air is excluded, and moisture is extracted 

 or driven off from wheat or its product, the remaining matter is in- 

 distructible. The undersigned regard any apparatus which has for 

 its basis the preservation of the food of man as invaluable: and pe- 

 culiarly so that at the present time when a part of the old world is 

 deprived of the most nutritious of esculents. The United States of- 

 fers her wheat, rye, buckwheat, either in the grain or made into 

 flour to make up the loss, and adds to the treasure a crop of Indian 

 corn of over five hundred million of bushels annually. 



