HORDEUM DECORTICATUM.
Hordeum perlatum, Fructus vel Semen Hordei; Pearl Barley; F. Orge mondé ou perlé; G. Gerollte Gerste, Gerstegraupen.
Botanical Origin—Hordeum distichum L.,—the Common or Long-eared Barley is probably indigenous to western temperate Asia, but has been cultivated for ages throughout the northern hemisphere. In Sweden its cultivation extends as far as 68° 38’ N. lat.; on the Norwegian coast up to the Altenfjord in 70° N. lat.; even in Lapland, it succeeds as high as 900 to 1350 feet above the level of the sea. In several of the southern Swiss Alpine valleys, barley ripens at 5000 feet, and in the Himalaya at 11,000 feet. In the Equatorial Andes, where it is extensively grown, it thrives up to at least 11,000 feet above the sea. No other cereal can be cultivated under so great a variety of climate.
According to Bretschneider,[2699] barley is included among the five cereals which it is related in Chinese history were sowed by the Emperor Shen-nung, who reigned about 2700 b.c.; but it is not one of the five sorts of grain which are used at the ceremony of ploughing and sowing as now annually performed by the emperors of China.
Theophrastus was acquainted with several sorts of barley (Κριθή), and among them, with the six-rowed kind or hexastichon, which is the species that is represented on the coins struck at Metapontum[2700] in Lucania, between the 6th and 2nd centuries b.c.
Strabo and Dioscorides in the 1st century allude to drinks made from barley, which according to Tacitus were even then familiar to the German tribes, as they are known to have been still earlier to the Greeks and Egyptians.
Barley is mentioned in the Bible as a plant of cultivation in Egypt and Syria, and must have been, among the ancient Hebrews, an important article of food, judging from the quantity allowed by Solomon to the servants of Hiram, king of Tyre (b.c. 1015). The tribute of barley paid to King Jotham by the Ammonites (b.c. 741) is also exactly recorded. The ancients were frequently in the practice of removing the hard integuments of barley by roasting it, and using the torrefied grain as food.
Manufacture—For use in medicine and as food for the sick, barley is not employed in its crude state, but only when deprived more or less completely of its husk. The process by which this is effected is carried on in mills constructed for the purpose, and consists essentially in passing the grain between horizontal millstones, placed so far apart as to rub off its integuments without crushing it. Barley partially deprived of its husk is known as Scotch, hulled or Pot Barley. When by longer and closer grinding the whole of the integuments have been removed, and the grain has become completely rounded, it is termed Pearl Barley. In the British Pharmacopœia it is this sort alone which is ordered to be used.
Description—Pearl Barley is in subspherical or somewhat ovoid grains about 2 lines in diameter, of white farinaceous aspect, often partly yellowish from remains of the adhering husk, which is present on the surface, as well as in the deep longitudinal furrow with which each grain is indented. It has the farinaceous taste and odour which are common to most of the cereal grains.
Microscopic Structure—The albumen which constitutes the main portion of the grain is composed of large thin-walled parenchyme, the cells of which on transverse section are seen to radiate from the furrow, and to be lengthened in that direction rather than longitudinally. In the vicinity of the furrow alone the tissue of the albumen is narrower. Its predominating large cells show a polygonal or oval outline, whilst the outer layer is built up of two, three or four rows of thick-walled, coherent, nearly cubic gluten-cells. This layer, about 70 mkm. thick, is coated with an extremely thin brown tegument, to which succeeds a layer about 30 mkm. thick, of densely packed, tabular, greyish or yellowish cells of very small size; this proper coat of the fruit in the furrow is of rather spongy appearance.