AND ITS INTRODUCTION INTO BRITAIN. 
175 
cause of loss, and some of which is not noticeable without search, 
should come over also. The addenda , so to describe them, are so 
numerous and so varied that they are cleared from the corn in some 
cases by different processes, and there are various proceeds of the 
results of such operations, sold under different appropriate names. 
The larger form of material is sometimes known as u rubble ” ; 
this consists of bodies larger than the wheat grains, such as beans, 
Indian corn (more or less infested as the case may be), ergot, a 
fungus well known to be most pernicious, rubbish of other kinds, 
and weed seeds too numerous to particularize, and also bits of iron, 
and pieces of metal binders, stones, dirt, and lumps of earth, re¬ 
quiring in some cases that the corn should go through a process of 
washing to melt out the soluble dirt. It would weary you if I 
paused to give my authorities for these statements, but they are 
taken from special reports placed, at my request, in my hands by 
the managers or heads of some of our well-known and chief firms. 
Another kind of u addendum ” is of short broken bits of straw, 
which as you will see is admirably adapted to convey Hessian-fly 
infestation ; this straw is sold for bedding pigs, etc. Another kind 
of screenings (that is material separated by screens from the grain) 
is known as “ hen-corn” ; this is sold for food for poultry. Screen¬ 
ings have to be removed from the foul corn, and are sold at excessively 
cheap rates, and thus they and their contents, detrimental or not 
as may happen, are distributed all over the country. 
Is it to be wondered at that, if we have what may so well carry 
infestation amongst us, infestation comes ? 
There appears to me to be a hope that this cause of evil may 
be checked. The millers object to it greatly because expensive 
machinery is requisite to clear the com to a state fit for use, and in 
some cases trade associations are formed to prevent more than a 
certain amount per cent, of impurity being forwarded, through 
which, the corn being subject to analysis before purchase, such as 
is found to be adulterated above a fixed percentage can be refused 
or purchased subject to award on arbitration. The plan has been 
found to succeed, and I have reason to believe may be the cause of 
great benefit. This plan, and arrangements such as this instituted 
by our importers, would clear away much fear of foreign infestation. 
But with regard to home treatment, returning once more to 
the Hessian fly, there are three or four broad principles of condition, 
or of action, which seem to me to give good reason for belief that 
we need not fear that this attack, which has sometimes been such 
a fearful scourge in other countries, will desolate our British fields. 
One of these is that in ordinary course we sow our wheat at a 
time when the Hessian flies of the summer brood are dead. In 
America, where (unlike us) they sow early in usual course, it is 
laid down as a rule where Hessian-fly attack is feared, to vary 
from this as far as they can and sow later, so that sowing at this 
date (with us happily the natural course of agricultural arrange¬ 
ment) is a great safeguard so far as our wheat is concerned, and to 
this I conjecture we owe the safety which we have enjoyed hitherto 
