I 
DIGESTIBILITY OF THE GRAIN SORGHUMS. 3 
The results of these investigations as a whole indicate that while 
it is best to use some wheat flour to make up for the lack of gluten 
in the sorghum meal a fairly large proportion of the meal may be 
satisfactorily used in admixture with wheat flour in the preparation 
of common foods. 
According to Davis * it has been noted that dwarf kafir will pop 
like pop corn. Tests made in connection with the work of the depart- 
ment showed that this was true of dwarf kafir and of feterita and 
dwarf milo as well, while kaoliang, it was found, scorched without 
popping. The kafir when popped was tender and of good flavor, 
closely resembling ordinary pop corn in miniature. Fewer kernels of 
feterita and dwarf milo popped, and the taste of these, moreover, 
was comparatively raw and less agreeable than that of the kafir. 
The kaoliang became quite crisp and tender without popping and 
had an agreeable taste. It should be noted in trying to pop the sor- 
ghums that, owing to the small size of the grain, the popper should 
be lined with wire netting to prevent its falling through. In similar 
tests with some of the millets no noticeable success was obtained in 
trying to pop the grains. 
Since a survey of the literature indicates that while digestion exper- 
iments with animals are fairly common, few if any studies with man 
have been reported, it seemed desirable to determine experimentally 
the digestibility of the grain sorghums, preparing them in different 
ways for eating, in order to secure data as to their value in human 
nutrition. 
MILLING THE GRAIN SORGHUMS. 
Realizing that considerable differences in the chemical composition 
of any grain occur as a result of variations in climatic and soil condi- 
tions, an attempt was made to obtain a supply of the different grains 
grown under identically the same conditions, and through the coop- 
eration of the Bureau of Plant Industry standardized grain was 
secured from the cereal field station at Amarillo, Tex. All the 
grains, including the corn and wheat which were used for comparison, 
were milled in the Bureau of Chemistry, the same mill being used for 
each grain and especial care exercised to secure meals of the same 
fineness. Milled in this way, the product in each case more nearly 
resembled meal than flour; consequently "meal" will be the descrip- 
tive term used throughout this discussion. A record was kept of the 
proportions of the different grains passing through the 16, 20, 40, 70, 
and 109 mesh sieves, but only that portion of the meal which passed 
through the 16-mesh sieve (that is, the size of sieve commonly used 
by the housekeeper) was used in the preparation of the experimental 
diet. The amount of kafir bran retained on the sieve and considered 
too coarse to use in the digestion experiments was about 21 per cent 
i Texas Dept. Agr. Bui. 42 (1915), pp. 18. 
