FRANKLIN'S DESCRIPTION OF MAIZE. 



549 



When we consider that the zone of cultivation of the maize plant extends without 

 interruption from 49° north latitude to 40° south latitude, it is not to be wondered at 

 that there are numerous varieties, from the gigantic Tlaouili of the Mexicans, which 

 absolutely requires a hot sun, and bears ears ten inches in length and five or six inches 

 in circumference, and the small variety with ears four or five inches long, which in 

 ordinary seasons will ripen its grain, even under the variable and weeping sky of 

 England, and which, with ears not larger than one's finger, was found by Squier 

 growing on the sacred island of Titicaca, at an altitude of 12,800 feet above the level 

 of the sea. 



The various uses to which the maize plant and grain may be applied cannot be 

 better enumerated than in the words of the celebrated Dr. Franklin. 



" It is remarked in North America that the English farmers, when they first arrived 

 there, finding a soil and climate proper for the husbandry they have been accustomed 

 to, and particularly suitable for raising wheat, they despise and neglect the culture 

 of maize or Indian corn ; but, observing the advantage it afibrds their neighbors, the 

 older inhabitants, they by degrees get more and more into the practice of raising it, 

 and the face of the country shows from time to time that the culture of that grain goes 

 on visibly augmenting. The inducements are the many different ways in which it may 

 be prepared so as to afford a wholesome and pleasing nourishment to men and other 

 animals. First, the family can begin to make use of it before the time of full harvest ; 

 for the tender green ears, stripped of their leaves and roasted by a quick tire till the 

 grain is brown, and eaten with a little salt or butter, are a delicacy. Secondly, when 

 the grain is riper and harder, the ears boiled in their leaves and eaten with butter are 

 also good and agreeable food. The tender green grain dried may be kept all the 

 year, and, mixed with green kidney beans, also dried, make at any time a pleasing 

 dish, being first soaked some hours in water and then boiled. When the grain is ripe 

 and hard there are also several ways of using it. One is to soak it all night in a 

 lessive or lye, and then pound it in a large wooden mortar with a wooden pestle ; the 

 skin of each grain is by that means skinned off, and the farinaceous part left whole, 

 which, being boiled, swells into a white, soft pulp, and, eaten with milk or with butter 

 and sugar, is delicious. The dry grain is also sometimes ground loosely so as to be 

 broken into pieces of the size of rice, and, being winnowed to separate the bran, it is 

 then boiled and eaten with turkeys or other fowls as rice. Ground into a finer meal, 

 they make of it by boiling a hasty-pudding or bouilli, to be eaten with milk or with 

 butter and sugar, that resembles what the Italians call polenta. They make of the 

 same meal with water and salt a hasty-cake, which, being stuck against a hoe or other 

 flat iron, is placed erect before the fire, and so baked, to be used as bread. They 

 also parch it in this manner : An iron pot is filled with sand, and set on the fire till 

 the sand is very hot. Two or three pounds of the grain are then thrown in, and well 

 mixed with the sand by stirring. Each grain bursts and throws out a white substance 

 of twice its bigness. The sand is separated by a wire sieve, and returned into the pot 

 to be again heated, and repeat the operation with fresh grain. That which is parched 

 is pounded to a powder in a mortar. This being sifted will keep long for use. An 

 Indian will travel far and subsist long on a small bag of it, taking only six or eight 

 ounces of it per day mixed with water. The flour of maize mixed with that of wheat 

 makes excellent bread, sweeter and more agreeable than that of wheat alone. To 



