3 
oy 
sin et a 
J. Dauglish on Fermented Bread. 331 
itin many ways, but they never ferment it. The sate is true 
with the potato-eater of Ireland, and the oatmeal-eater of Scot- 
land. Nor do we find that even wheat is always subjected to 
fermentation ; but the peculiar physical properties of this grain 
appear to have tasked man’s ingenuity more than any other, to 
devise methods of preparing from it food which shall be both 
palatable and digestible. In the less civilized states, a favorite 
mode of dressing wheat grain has been, by first roasting and then 
grinding it. On the borders of the Mediterranean it is prepared 
in the form of maccaroni and vermicelli, while in the East it is 
made into hard thin cakes for the more delicate, and for the hard 
working and robust into thieker and more dense masses of baked 
bread; by which latter means the gluten assumes a form some- 
what analogous to the texture of the Jungs, so’ that ce a 
surface is secured for the action of the digestive jwices ; an “ 
_ lieve is the sole object to be sought in the preparation o 
read from wheaten flour. 
Wheat is said to be the type of adult human food. It suppiies, 
i i find that 
tion of the human organism. And yet in practice we find 
the food which we prepare from it, and furnish to the inhabitants 
i of a very large number of the 
€ population. : 
i the large towns of France wheaten: bread certainly forms a 
very large proportion of the diet of the laboring classes, but not 
ain 
wh ; rm : 
eat, though in a coarser form, hardiest and finest portion of 
