400 Miscellanies. 
longer time to the action of cold water, which is easily done by en- 
closing them in a strong sack, which they only half fill, and beating 
the sack with a stick, or treading it with the feet ina rivulet. The 
whole is then to be completely dried in the sun, or by fire, and re- 
peatedly ground in a flour-mill. The ground wood is next baked 
into small flat cakes, with water, rendered slightly mucilaginous by 
the addition of some decoction of linseed, mallow stalks and leaves, 
lime-tree bark, or any other such substance. Professor Autenrieth 
prefers marsh-mallow roots, of which one ounce renders eighteen 
quarts of water sufficiently mucilaginous, and these serve to form four 
pounds and a half of wood-flour into cakes. ‘These cakes are baked 
until they are brown on the surface. After this, they are broken to 
pieces, and again ground, until the flour will pass through a fine bolt- 
ing cloth, and upon the fineness of the flour does its fitness to make 
bread depend. ‘The flour of a hard wood such as beech, requires the i 
process of baking and grinding to be repeated. Wood-flour does not 
ferment so readily as wheaten-flour ; but the Professor found fifteen 
pounds of birch-wood flour, with three pounds of sour wheat-leaven, 
and two pounds of wheat-flour, mixed up with eight measures of new 
milk, yielded thirty-six pounds of very good bread. The learned 
Professor tried the nutritious properties of wood-flour, in the first 
instance, upon a young dog ; afterwards he fed two pigs upon it ; and 
then, taking courage from the success of the experiment, he attack- 
ed it himself. His family party, he says, ate it in the form of gruel 
or soup, dumplings and pancakes, all made with as little of any other 
ingredient as possible: and found them palatable, and quite whole- 
some. Are we, then, instead of looking upon a human being stretch- 
ed upon a bare plank, as the picture of extreme want and wretched- 
ness, to regard him as reposing in the lap of abundance, and consid- 
er henceforth, the common phrase, ‘“‘ bed and board,” as compound- 
ed of synonymous terms ?— Quarterly Review, November, 1834. 
N 
For Sate—TZhe Cabinet of Minerals of the late Dr. Young, of Edenville, 
New Vork.—This collection was selected with great care, by Dr. Young, and em- 
braces the rare and beautiful productions of Orange County, N. Y. and Sussex Co. 
N.J. Its erystals of Spinelle, Corundum, Franklinite, Brucite, Troostite, Melan- 
ite, Hornblende, Bronzite, Idocrase, &c. would be an invaluable acquisition to any 
public cabinet; it has been generally pronounced by mineralogists to be one of the 
most select and beautiful collections, ever formed in this country. hyd a 
