34 BULLETIN OF THE BUSSEY INSTITUTION. 
There is reason to believe that bran is liable to lose a part of its 
nitrogen by keeping, and in this way to deteriorate in value, both 
when stored and when transported long distances. Millers and grain- 
dealers are careful not to allow any very considerable quantity of bran 
to accumulate upon their premises, because of its known tendency 
‘to heat” and “to shrink,” or lose weight. For the same reason 
they avoid throwing it into heaps. Jam assured that a few tons of 
bran piled up and left to itself will quickly become hot, and waste 
away to the extent of perhaps twenty per cent of its original weight. 
At the same time it loses its light, mobile character, and settles down 
to a tolerably coherent mass, from which well-defined pieces can be 
cut out with the shovel. All this is good chemical evidence, which 
proves that bran ferments easily. But in such process of fermentation 
the flesh-like albuminoids would be the first among the ingredients of 
bran to suffer decomposition and be lost in the form of gas. It is not 
impossible that one explanation of the somewhat smaller proportion 
of albuminoids in the American brans is to be found in the fact of 
their having been tightly packed during the long journey to market 
from the place of their production. 
On the other hand, it is not unlikely that the samples of bran so 
exceptionally rich in albuminoids may have come from wheat which 
grew on land very rich in available nitrogen, or upon land that had 
been highly manured. The influence of nitrogenized manures in in- 
creasing the proportion of albuminoids in crops has been often noticed, 
but Messrs. Lawes and Gilbert (loc. cit., pp. 12, 13, 21, 28, 30, 32) 
have observed, in addition to this, that grain grown with nitrogenous 
manuring in good seasons, which permitted the crop to be well devel- 
oped and matured, allowed a better separation of the flour and yielded 
a cleaner bran than the grain of poorer crops. Their observations also 
confirm the general opinion that old wheat yields up its flour better 
than new. In a large number of trials upon different samples of 
wheat they got on the average no more than seventy per cent of flour 
from the three first wires, while the old and well-matured wheat from 
which their bran just now alluded to was obtained gave seventy-seven 
and three-quarters per cent. It is not surprising, therefore, that brans 
unusually perfect separation of the several products. An uncommonly large yield 
of flour was obtained, and the bran was remarkably free from flour. The large per- 
centage of ash found in these bran-products also attests thejr freedom from flour. 
