Milling Qualities of different Wheats. 
225 
Perhaps the first thing necessary is to state that the miller 
does not depend upon any one sort or upon the sorts coming 
from any one country or hemisphere. In all well-appointed 
mills there are facilities for dealing with many sorts of grain, 
no two sorts in fact having the same characteristics, either in 
regard to their individual composition or the admixtures 
which are to be found with them. Briefly, however, what is 
required is a combination of wheats which will in their 
entirety contain certain properties such as strength, colour, 
flavour, and yield of flour. The term “ strength ” is defined 
by millers as the relative capacity of flour to make a loaf of 
large size. 
Strength, up to the present time, is only possessed in a 
marked degree by three groups, namely, those wheats coming 
from Canada, other parts of America, and Russia. Australia 
grows a fine, big wheat berry which is remarkable for yield, 
colour, and sweet flavour, and in the best of seasons it also 
shows fair strength. Indian wheats are on the whole noted 
for colour and yield of flour. The wheats of Argentina show 
just a little of the strength element, but here again colour is 
the main attribute. California and the whole of the Washington 
territory sends us a wheat which is very weak indeed, but yields 
a flour rich in whiteness or colour. New Zealand has also a 
grain of similar but secondary character. French and German 
wheats are noted mostly for flour colour and not for loaf 
raising, and English wheat — as already hinted — is best noted 
for colour and flavour in addition to the excellent yield of 
flour. 
From this brief introduction it will be gathered that 
throughout the world there is, as a rule, a superabundant 
amount of wheat which will give colour and bloom to the 
bread ; but the area wherein is grown the stronger glutinous 
kind is somewhat restricted, and this is where the gist of my 
remarks apply. Taking as an example our last wheat harvest 
of 1905, the official estimates show a yield of close upon fifty- 
nine million bushels in Great Britain, which may be described 
as all colour, but no strength. This is an obvious disadvantage. 
To feed our population we need about thirty million 
quarters (or 240 million bushels) of wheat yearly, and in the 
following remarks I will try to show that it would be to the 
benefit of the British farmer to study the requirements of 
millers a little more closely. 
Most readers will remember that a Home-grown Wheat 
Committee was appointed about four years ago by the National 
Association of British and Irish Millers, who have enlisted the 
co-operation of the Board of Agriculture, the Rothamsted and 
Woburn Experimental Stations, and others. This Committee 
YOL. 66. Q 
