THE GRAMINEjE. 



213 



Tiame of mung-corn, corruptly fl-om monk-corn, 

 because bread made with it was commonly eaten 

 in monasteries. 



With the exception of Avheat, rye contains a 

 greater proportion of gluten than any other of the 

 cereal gx'ains, to which fact is owing its capahi- 

 lity of being converted into a spongy bread. It 

 contains, likewise, nearly five parts in every 

 hundred of ready-formed saccharine matter, and, 

 is in consequence easily convertible into malt, 

 and thence into beer or ardent spirit ; but the 

 produce of this last is so small, in comparison 

 with that of malted barley, as to offer no in- 

 ducement for its employTOient to that purpose. 

 Rye has a strong tendency to pass rapidly from 

 the vinoxis to the acetous state of fermentation, 

 and whenever that circumstance has intervened, 

 it would be vain to attempt either to brew or to 

 distil it. Unmalted rye meal is mixed in Hol- 

 land with barley malt, in the proportion of two 

 parts by weight of the former, with one part of 

 the latter, and the whole being fermented to- 

 gether, forms the wash whence is distilled all 

 the grain spirit produced in that country, and 

 knoAvn throughout Europe as Hollands, Geneva. 

 There must, however, be some circumstances, of 

 a peculiar nature connected with the process, as 

 conducted by the Dutch distillers, since no at- 

 tempts made elsewhere have ever been success- 

 ful in obtaining a spirit having the same good 

 qualities. 



Rye is the common bread-corn in all the sandy 

 districts to the south of the Baltic sea and the 

 Gulf of Finland, furnishing abundance of food 

 for the numerous inhabitants of places which, 

 without it, must have been little better than 

 sandy and uninhabited deserts. In these dis- 

 tricts it not only forms the chief article of con- 

 sumption, but furnishes a material of some con- 

 sequence to the export trade of the Prussian 

 ports. 



The peasantry in Sweden subsist very gene- 

 rally upon rye-cakes, which they bake only 

 twice in the course of the year, and which, dur- 

 ing most part of the time, are consequently as 

 liard as a board. Linnseus observed a curious 

 practice in Lapland. One part of rye and two 

 parts of barley being mixed together, the seed 

 is committed to the ground as soon as the earth 

 is capable of tillago in the spring. The barley 

 shoots up vigorously, ripens its ears, and is 

 reaped ; while the rye merely goes into leaf with- 

 out shooting up any stem, its growth being re- 

 tarded by the barley, which may be said to 

 smother it. After the barley is reaped, the rye 

 advances in growth, and, without any farther 

 care 'of the cultivator, yields an abundant crop 

 in the following year. 



This grain, to which so many human beings 

 are thus indebted for aliment, is subject to a dis- 

 eaS'e which, when it occurs, not only deprives it 



of all its useful properties as food, but renders it 

 absolutely noxious, and, it may even be said, 

 poisonous to man. When thus diseased it is 

 called by English farmers horned rye, and by 

 the French ergot, from the fancied resem- 

 blance to a cock's spur of an excrescence which 

 the grain then bears. Whenever this disease 

 has been witnessed, it has usually happened that 

 a wet spring has been succeeded by a summer 

 more than ordinarily hot. Tissot, a French 

 physician, bestowed much attention on this sub- 

 ject, and upon its melancholy consequences. It 

 is from him we learn that the excrescence just 

 mentioned is an irregular vegetation, which 

 springs from the middle substance, between the 

 grain and the leaf, growing to the length of an 

 inch and a half, and being two-tenths of an inch 

 broad. It is of a brownish colour. 



Bread which is made of i-ye thus diseased has 

 an acrid and nauseous taste, and its use is fol- 

 lowed by spasmodic symptoms and gangrenous 

 disorders. These effects cannot by any means be 

 classed among imaginary evils. In 1596 an epi- 

 demic prevailed in Hesse, which was wholly as- 

 cribed to the use of horned rye. Some of the 

 persons wlio had unfortunately partaken of this 

 food were seized with epilepsy, the attacks of 

 which, for the most part, ended fatally; of others, 

 who became insane, few ever fully recovered the 

 proper use of their senses; while some, who 

 were apparently restored, were liable through 

 life to periodical returns of their disorder. 



Similar calamities were experienced in differ- 

 ent parts of the continent at various times, be- 

 tween 1G48 and 1736, and these visitations have 

 been recorded by Burghart, Hoffman,»and others. 

 In 1709, this diseased condition of the rye oc- 

 curred in a part of France to such a degree, that 

 in consequence of it no fewer than five hundred 

 patients were at one time under care of the sur- 

 geons at the public hospital at Orleans. The 

 symptoms first came on with all the apparent 

 characteristics of drunkenness, after which the 

 toes became diseased, mortified, and fell off. The 

 disorder thence extended itself up the leg, and 

 frequently attacked the trunk, and this some- 

 times occurred even after amputation of the dis- 

 eased limbs had been performed, with the vain 

 hope of stopping the progress of .the disorder. 



The poisonous quality of horned rye is not 

 exerted upon human beings alone, both insects 

 and larger animals having been fatally affected 

 by it; even flies, that merely settled casually 

 upon the grain, have been killed by that means; 

 and deer, swine, and different kinds of poultry, 

 upon which experiments were tried, aU died 

 miserable deaths, some in strong convulsions, 

 and others with mortified ulcers. These cir- 

 cumstances must have been truly appalling by 

 their severity and the fi-equency of their recur- 

 rence. Few evils, however, are wholly of an 



