34 BRITISH GRASSES. 



Brown Riga or Archangel Oat is darker-coloured than 

 the other dun oats ; it has long steins, and is very pro- 

 lific. Taken from some oats imported from Archangel. 



Red Essex Oat is very prolific, but of bad quality. It 

 is grown to a considerable extent in the south-east of 

 England for feeding horses. 



The best samples of oats are grown on clay lands. 

 Scotch oats fetch a higher price in the market than those 

 from any other country. The cultivation of oats is de- 

 cided by the kind of land and the taste of the people. 



The Celtic race have always been great consumers of 

 oatmeal, hence the prevalence of oat crops in the High- 

 lands and Lowlands of Scotland and the north-west of 

 Ireland. The oat cakes of Scotland and the north of 

 England are excellent, and the flad brod of Norway is 

 formed of the same meal and reputed equally pleasant. 

 Oatmeal is still more extensively used in North Britain 

 for porridge than for bread, and it is accounted a mark 

 of the degeneracy of Edinburgh servants that they are 

 no longer contented with porridge for breakfast. Dr. 

 Johnson made the Scotch use of oats a ground for one 

 of his sarcasms. " In England oats are food for horses, 

 and in Scotland food for man." He did not probably 

 know how extensively oatmeal was used in the north of 

 England. In Scotland and Ireland it is still the princi- 

 pal food of the poor. Professor Johnston, of Edinburgh, 

 demonstrates that oatmeal is rich in those protein 

 compounds which constitute the muscle-forming prin- 

 ciple of the animal frame. Hence it is that this is such 

 desirable food for horses. 



Oats freed from the cuticle are called groats ; of these 

 a kind of gruel is made, generally accounted superior to 

 that made of oatmeal. In Switzerland they make excel- 



