BREAD PLANTS 3 1 



day in a weak solution of formalin, a cheap drug 

 that destroys the smut spores hid in the hulls, and 

 does not injure the kernel at all. Spores that fly 

 about the oat field cannot injure the plants they 

 lodge on, but next year's plants are endangered. 

 The formalin bath saves the farmers of the United 

 States millions of dollars annually in the oatcrop.j 



RYE 



Because it grows on soil too poor and arid for 

 other grains, rye is called "the grain of poverty. " 

 Rye meal makes the bread of peasants in European 

 countries, over a vast area of the poorest, and so 

 the cheapest, land. The extremes of heat and cold 

 are suffered by these people, whose agriculture 

 is of a hopelessly primitive sort. They scratch 

 in the grain, drag or harrow it, and gather the 

 harvest with hand sickles, as their parents have 

 done for generations without number. 



In Russia more rye is grown than in any other 

 country. It is a great crop in Scandinavia and 

 northern Germany, where everybody eats rye 

 bread and likes it. The German "pumpernickel" 

 is a bread that many Americans like. Not all of 

 them know that they are eating the rye loaf, the 

 46 black bread," of Europe. The liking for this 



