15 
sun shines on it, and the gentle summer wind sweeps 
over it in ripples of light. Much Barley grain is used for 
the feeding of poultry and fattening of pigs, and bread 
is sometimes made of it, but the chief use is in making 
beer. The grain is moistened, and spread on the floor in 
a dark room, that it may heat, and begin to grow, but 
just as the seed has swollen and is about to burst, it is 
laid down on the brick floor of a kiln, and the growth is 
stopped. It is now called malt, and has a sweet taste, 
and is handed over to the Brewer, who boils it several 
times with hops, and leaving it to ferment converts it 
into Beer, Ale or Porter, the strengthening drink of the 
inhabitants of Northern Europe, a great blessing when 
not used to excess. The BERE or BIGG ( b ), is barley 
of six rows of blossoms, not so good, but ripening fast¬ 
er, and therefore grown where the summer is too short 
to ripen the superior grains. 
RYE ( c ) will likewise grow in poor land, and in cold climates, 
and it is therefore cultivated a good deal in Northern 
Europe, furnishing bread to the inhabitants of Sweden 
and Norway, and growing the most northerly of all grains. 
No one knows when or where any of these grains were 
wild, they seem, like oxen and sheep, to have been at¬ 
tached to the use of man from the time of the flood, and 
not to have been discovered and applied to his service 
like a new invention. 
This is especially the case with WHEAT ( d ) and (e), the grain 
which above all others serves for the support of man, in 
so much that ears of wheat are the very token of fertility 
and prosperity. There are several different kinds of 
wheat, some with long beards like barley, some with 
more or fewer rows of blossoms and grains in the ear, 
but all with the pendant anthers, and large solid grain. 
The wheat of ancient Egypt had ears spreading like fin¬ 
gers from a hand, five, seven, or nine ears arising from 
one stalk. Corn which had been laid up for three thou¬ 
sand years in the case of a Mummy, has on being sown 
actually grown, and produced these spreading spikes, just 
such as Pharaoh dreamt of, but the wheat which is chief¬ 
ly grown in Europe, bears a single ear on each stalk, 
with usually about five rows of grains, and from eight 
to fifteen grains in each row, about five or six stems ari¬ 
sing from each root, and thus each seed sown affording 
a most bounteous increase, sufficient not only to afford 
seed to the sower, but bread to the eater, enough and to 
spare. 
“The bare dead grain in Autumn sown. 
Its robe of vernal green puts on; 
Glad from its wintry grave it springs, 
Fresh garnished by the King of Kings, 
So, Lord, to those that sleep in Thee 
Shall new and glorious bodies be. — 
Wheat is a hardy plant, and is usually sown late in the year. 
The bare dull grain of autumn does indeed arise beauteous 
from the furrow, for nothing- can be more exquisite than 
the colour of young wheat in the early spring, when the 
frosts and snows begin to pass away, and the slender flags 
or leaves have freely mantled over the dark soil that 
nourishes them. By June they have raised their stems, 
sheath within sheath, and the tall ears are rising, ador¬ 
ned with their nodding anthers like pendant jewels; in 
another month, the jewels have fallen, but the pulpy seed 
is hardening, and a strange pale gold is beginning to tint 
the fields as they become “white to the harvest”. The 
Hill sides glow with the bright and ruddy amber of the 
red wheat, and the paler buff of barley — and then the 
reapers come forth with their reaping hooks, men, wo¬ 
men, and children together, they gather the clusters of 
rich brown ears, cut them down at the roots, and bind 
them into those noble and beautiful things, wheat shea¬ 
ves, that seem the visible emblems of the good Providence 
that feeds us. By and by when the sheaves have stood 
long enough to be thoroughly dried, the heavy harvest 
waggon comes creaking slowly throug-h the stubble, and 
the sheaves are tossed into it, till the waggon has been 
loaded again and again, and at the last, the horses and the 
topmost .sheaf are crowned with green boughs, and the 
reapers burst out into loud and merry shouts at their 
harvest home, which generally ends with a happy harvest 
supper. Then come the Gleaners, old and young, trooping 
into the field, to gather the ears that are left, even as the 
Law of Moses commanded that the scattered spikes should 
be left for the poor, the fatherless and the widow, that so 
the Lord might give His blessing. After harvest, the 
grains are separated from the ears by means of threshing, 
which used to be done in the Holy Land by driving Oxen 
over the wheat to tread it out with their feet. — In our 
country, a man stood on the barn floor with a flail, two 
heavy sticks fastened together by a leathern thong-, with 
which he thumped the grains out, and they were after¬ 
wards cleared of the chaff, or dried corolla and calyx, by 
turning a winnowing machine made of fans of canvass 
upon a frame; but these processes have been much disu¬ 
sed of late, since small steam engines have been invented 
which thrash and winnow at the same time, and may be 
heard humming, fuming and panting beside the fast dis¬ 
appearing wheat stacks in the Autumn. The corn thus clea¬ 
red, is sent to the mill, where it is crushed between two 
heavy stones. The outer case of the grain is hard and 
dry, and is sifted away from the rest and sold separately 
as bran, for the feeding- of pigs. Within is the white soft 
substance, consisting of starch and albumen, which is 
called flour, and is handed over to the Baker to be made 
into bread; that article of food which may well be called 
the staff of life, since there is scarcely any other on which 
it is possible to live so long or so exclusively. All the 
other grains contain more or less of these substances, 
starch and albumen, but none are so nourishing as is the 
flour of wheat, and it is g-rown throughout the Temperate 
Zone, wherever the soil is good enough to support it. 
OATS (e) have a graceful loose nodding spike, with their blos¬ 
soms separate, larger than those of wheat or barley, their 
grains of a shuttle shape, and sometimes black and po¬ 
lished, though more often white. Their native home is 
said to be the Caucasus, but they have always been 
under cultivation, and have been much used for food. In 
Scotland, oatcake is a favourite article of diet, and both 
in Scotland and Ireland, oaten flour stirred over a fire 
with a stick, with a little water, is much eaten under the 
name of porridge or stir about. In England oats are the 
chief food of horses, and the chaff of oats is used for stuf¬ 
fing the mattresses of the poor. The ancients seem to 
have made musical instruments of oaten straw, and their 
latin name AVENA is likewise the name of a pipe. 
PLATE XV. 
The MAIZE ( a ), is the largest and handsomest of all the 
grains. The plant is sometimes six or eight feet high, 
with immense flag like leaves, tinted with a ruddy colour. 
The blossoms have the stamens and pistils separate. The 
barren flowers grow in a large spike, bearing- two rows 
of alternate blossoms, with pendant anthers, the fertile 
ones are in large sheaths, at the joints of the stem. These 
sheaths entirely conceal and guard the long soft pale 
green head, and the pollen could hardly reach it, but for 
the profusion of long green hair-like styles “the long and 
glossy plumage” which are hung out from the sheath to 
catch the pollen. This done, these styles wither into 
brown or red strings, while the germs beneath harden 
into beautiful round golden grains as large as peas, ran¬ 
ged in rows along the receptacle, while the spathe dying 
away, displays the rich looking treasure. Maize was the 
corn of America before it was discovered by Europeans, 
and the name of Indian corn is therefere given to it, 
though it is also called on the Continent Turkish wheat, 
and by the Germans Italian wheat because they first 
received it from Italy. It is a favorite crop in north Ame¬ 
rica, where the cobs are eaten green and considered ex¬ 
cellent, and cakes and puddings of many kinds are made 
with the meal, but the bread is not so good or nourishing 
as wheaten bread; and though the meal has now and 
then been imported in time of scarcity, and the plant will 
easily grow in our climate, it is seldom cultivated here 
except as an ornament. 
-“in all the splendour 
Of its garments green and yellow 
Of its tassels and its plumage 
And the Maize ears full and bursting 
Gleamed from bursting sheaves of verdure.” 
