164 MAINE AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. I903. 



years of careful experimentation. It is evident that no collec- 

 tion of data like that given on pag:e 155, in which wheats of one 

 variety are compared with those of another, can cast any certain 

 light upon the subject, and the only fair comparisons now avail- 

 able are those given on pp. 159 and 161. The general trend of 

 these results, contradictory though they are, is in favor of the 

 northwestern grown wheats. These have been found to contain 

 on the average, in the water-free grain, 15.28 per cent of protein ; 

 while the Aroostook county wheats, grown from the same seed, 

 contain 14.27 per cent of protein ; a difference in favor of the 

 former of i.oi per cent. 



Milling Experiments. 

 In conversation with the millers while obtaining the samples 

 of flour described earlier in this bulletin, it was learned that they 

 had very little notion as to the amount of wheat they used to 

 make a barrel of flour. In order to study the losses in Maine 

 milling two milling experiments were made at the Wash- 

 burn mill. This mill and the services of the miller were 

 kindly placed at our disposal by its owner, Mr. T. H. Phair of 

 Presque Isle. The mill is a small one (20 barrels capacity), and 

 at the time of the experiment newly erected, the miller had had 

 very limited experience, and the wheats milled were hard wheats 

 grown in the Northwest. For these reasons the test was not a 

 fair measure of the work the mill can do, but it probably fairly 

 represents the quality of flour and closeness of milling that was in 

 practice there in the fall of 1900. With the erection of the new 

 mill at Houlton and the employment of a skilled practical miller, 

 the owners, E. Merritt & Sons, were sure they were doing work 

 which would compare favorably with that of small mills in any 

 part of the country. They kindly placed their mill and their 

 miller at the services of the Station and five additional tests with 

 native grown and northwestern grown wheat of several varieties 

 were made. The "runs" were quite short and the milling was 

 not as close as doubtless would have been the case if the time of 

 the "runs" had been days instead of one or two hours. The 

 baking tests were made for us by Mr. Foster, the expert of the 

 Consolidated Milling Company of Minneapolis. The detailed 

 statements of the milling experiments and the baking tests 

 follow, together with a discussion of the results. 



