WHEAT. 25 
ant. The best season for committing the seed to the 
ground is September, and the earlier in the month the 
better. Some farmers consider it necessary to steep 
the seed in brine or other pickle before it is used, to 
prevent it from being devoured by vermin, and render 
the corn less liable to disease than it would be Without 
this process. In a good season the wheat harvest com- 
mences in August, and is finished in the course of the 
ensuing month. This species of corn is usually cut 
with instruments called reaping-hooks, but in some 
parts it is mown with scythes. 
The different kinds or varieties of wheat that are 
cultivated in this country are too numerous to be par- 
ticularized. 
Wheat is liable to injury, not only from the attack of 
insects, but from several kinds of disease, the principal 
of which are blight, mildew , and smut. In the former 
the fibres and leaves of the plants are contracted and 
enfeebled, and the grain is ultimately deprived of suf- 
ficient nourishment : by mildew the straw and ear are 
affected : and by smut the grains, instead of containing 
their proper substance, become filled with a black or 
dark brown powder. 
Wheat flour consists of four distinct principles, glu- 
ten, starch, albumen, and a sweet kind of mucilage. 
And it is a remarkable circumstance, that the glut e?i, 
if not similar, has a very near alliance to animal sub- 
stances. 
To enumerate the various ways in which preparations 
from wheat serve for nutriment would be unnecessary, 
as they are known to every one. 
Starch is a substance frequently prepared from wheat 
and is obtained by the following process. The wheat is 
put into tubs of water, and exposed, for some days, to 
the heat of the sun, in order to bring on a proper -de- 
gree of fermentation, the water being changed twice a 
day. Having now become sufficiently soft ? itis poured 
into large canvass bags, which are worked or beaten, on a 
board over an empty vessel, to extract the farinaceous 
VOL. ii. c 
