194 PLANT AND ORGANIC CHEMISTRY 
per cent, of all the land and cereals, and the product about 
9.2 bushels per head of total population. . . . 
“There is but little wheat land east of the Hudson River, 
and although New York and Pennsylvania produce consider¬ 
able wheat, the great bulk of the wheat country lies west of 
those states, beyond the seventy-seventh meridian and the 
Appalachian chain of mountains, and north of the Ohio 
River. . . . 
“The successful cultivation of wheat, in a commercial sense, 
is determined by a complicated set of conditions.” In an agri¬ 
cultural sense, “the yield and quality of the crop practically 
depend upon but five conditions, — the climate, the soil, 
the variety cultivated, the mode of cultivation, and the lia¬ 
bility to destruction by insects.” Chemistry has to do, how¬ 
ever, with only the soil and the variety of grain related. The 
chemical composition of the grain and its value as a bread 
plant not only vary greatly in the different varieties, but also 
in the same variety, from year to year, and on different soils. 
Indian corn 1 stands first in amount of the cereal productions 
of the country. This cereal is more generally distributed 
over the country than any other; the place of its greatest pro¬ 
duction is on the fertile prairies and river bottoms of the West, 
and north of the thirty-sixth parallel of latitude. A compara¬ 
tively few states 2 produce the bulk of the crop, the four states 
of Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, and Indiana producing upward of 
fifty-two per cent. 
“The chemical composition 3 of Indian corn varies more 
than wheat, as might be expected from the vast number and 
great difference of its varieties. As a whole, it is not quite so 
rich in albuminoids.” It varies also much more in the amount 
of fibre. The average proportion of starch is less than in wheat, 
but the most noticeable difference is in the amount of oil. 
Indian corn when in the “milk” is a most nutritious and 
excellent food. “The chemical analysis of green corn shows 
respectively fourteen to fifteen per cent, albuminoids, ... an 
amount equal to that in the very best wheat flour.” 4 
1 Cereal Report, p. 470. 2 Ibid., p. 471. 
3 Ibid., p. 482. 4 Ibid., p. 484. 
