314 



CEREALS. 



land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness; a land 

 whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest 

 dig brass." Barley is here placed with all that is good and 

 beautiful. Gideon heard in the camp of the enemy one 

 soldier rehearsing a dream to his fellow, that "a cake of 

 barley tumbled into the host of Midean, and came unto the 

 tent and smote it that it fell." Ruth also gleaning in the 

 fields of Boaz until evening, and at night winnowed about 

 an ephah of barley, which is about eleven gallons. 



It was a legal tender among the Jews, as Solomon paid 

 Hiram, of Tyre, in part with barley, as did also the 

 Ammonites pay tribute to Jotharn in barley and gold. 

 Solomon used it as food for his horses and dromedaries. 



By this it will be seen that barley has been in use from 

 time immemorial, and in former times held a higher place 

 as a food than it possesses now. 



By the following table will be seen a comparative analy- 

 ses of the various cereals. 



Barley has been cultivated in this country from its ear- 

 liest settlement, as in the proceedings of the colony at Mar- 

 tha's Vineyard it is stated that barley was sown in 1622, and 

 at Jamestown the "London Company" sowed it in 1611 

 and, only a few years later, it was shipped from the Island 

 of Manhattan to Holland by the Dutch colonists. 



Little need be said about the cultivation of barley, as in 

 most respects its growth and harvesting is similar to wheat. 



