160 



" Elizabeth, aged thirteen. Both legs off below the knees. 



" Sarah, aged ten. One foot off at the ankle. 



" Robert, aged eight. Both legs off below the knees. 



" Edward, aged four. Both feet off at the ankles. 



" An infant, aged four months. Dead. 



" The father was not attacked until about a fortnight after his wife 

 and children, and in a slighter degree. In him the pain was confined 

 to two fingers of his ;right hand, which turned blackish, and withered. 

 Another labouring man, in the same parish, who had eaten of this bread, 

 suffered from numbness in both his hand for above a month. They 

 were constantly cold, and his finger-ends peeled ; one thumb, he says, 

 remains without any sensation." 



In several instances, where bread made from the same corn was 

 eaten in the farmer's own family, as well as by other persons, no pre- 

 judicial effects were noticed, probably in consequence of such bread 

 being only occasionally used, and as an adjunct to other wholesome 

 and nourishing food. The nature of the disease with which the wheat 

 was affected, in this lamentable case, does not appear to have been 

 ascertained ; but the circumstances are well authenticated, and were in 

 my boyhood, the early part of the present century, the subject of local 

 tradition in the part of the county of Suffolk in which they took place. 

 It is possible that the fatality attendant upon the use of the damaged 

 grain, in the unfortunate family above mentioned, arose quite as much 

 from the absolute deficiency of proper nourishment, as from the alleged 

 poisonous quality of the mUdewed fungus ; but, with such examples 

 before us, too great caution cannot be enforced regarding the use of 

 grain or flour of suspicious character. 



The great superiority of wheat, as dependent on its large proportion 

 of gluten, will be readily understood, when it is remarked that the 

 chemical composition of that proximate principle is identical with that 

 of good ox-beef. And when we learn that the quantity of gluten found 

 in rice scarcely exceeds one-half that belonging to barley, or is little 

 more than three per cent., we may at the same time comprehend how 

 much a difference in their staple articles of diet, has contributed to the 

 exaltation of the nations of Europe above the rice-feeding population 

 of India and China. Starch, the other leading constituent of all kinds of 

 grain, gives substance to the human frame ; but its strength and activity, 

 as weU mental as corporeal, are only maintained by food, of which the 

 nitrogenous element is a compound. 



Several other species or varieties of wheat, little known in England, 

 are cultivated in Grermany, Poland, and elsewhere on the Continent. 

 Of these, T. polonicum, the Polish wheat, is unquestionably one of the 

 latter class, a mere inferior variety of T. sativum, with smaller ears, 

 and having three-flowered instead of four-flowered spikelets. The 

 others, collectively called spelts, or spelter-wheats, are probably varieties 

 of a distinct species. 



T. spelta, common spelt wheat, is largely grown in Southern Ger- 

 many, where it is so much liked as, in some districts, almost to exclude 

 other wheat from the markets. Being all but indifferent to soil and 

 situation, and, from the shortness and stiffness of its culm, not readily 



