Not only do the relative proportions of starch and gluten vary in the same seed when grown in different countries, but even when grown in the same country, according to the kind of manure put on the soil, a point of great importance to agriculturists, when known and attended to.
[F] See “Church of England Magazine,” vol. vii. p. 52-3-4.
[G] “I have been informed by Sir Joseph Banks, that the Derbyshire miners, in winter, prefer oat-cakes to wheaten bread, finding that this kind of nourishment enables them to support their strength and perform their labour better. In summer they say oat-cake heats them, and they then consume the finest wheaten bread they can procure.”—Sir H. Dacy’s Agricultural Chemistry, 5th edit., p. 143.
The propriety and advantage of this practice is established by the recent investigations of Boussingault, who found that oats contain more than double the quantity of nitrogen which exists in any of the other cereal grains.—See Annales de Chimie et de Physique, tom. lxvii. p. 408-21.
[H] Carpenter’s “General and Comparative Physiology,” p. 272 and Dr. Prout’s “Bridgewater Treatise,” book iii.
[I] See Forrest’s “Voyage to the Moluccas;” Craufurd’s “Indian Archipelago, or Library of Entertaining Knowledge, Vegetable Substances, Food of Man,” p. 171.
[J] “In the season of inundations, these clumps of the Mauritia, with their leaves in the form of a fan, have the appearance of a forest rising from the bosom of the waters. The navigator in proceeding along the channel of the delta of the Oronooco at night, sees with surprize the summits of the palm-trees illuminated by large fires. These are the habitations of the Guaraons (see Sir W. Raleigh’s Brevis Descript. Guianæ, 1594, tab. 4), which are suspended from the trunks of trees. These tribes hang up mats in the air, which they fill with earth, and kindle on a layer of moist clay the fire necessary for their household wants. They have owed their liberty and their political independence for ages, to the quaking and swampy soil which they pass over in the time of drought, and on which they alone know how to walk in security to their solitude in the delta of the Oronooco, to their abodes on the trees, where religious enthusiasm will probably never lead any American Stylites (see Mosheim’s Church History). This tree, the tree of life of the missionaries, not only affords the Guaraons a safe dwelling during the risings of the Oronooco, but its shelly fruit, its farinaceous pith, its juice, abounding in saccharine matter, and the fibres of its leaves, furnish them with food, wine, and thread proper for making cords and weaving hammocks. It is curious to observe in the lowest degree of human civilization, the existence of a whole tribe depending on one single species of palm-tree, similar to those insects which feed on one and the same flower, or on one and the same part of a plant.”—Humboldt, Person. Narrative, vol. v. p. 728.
[K] Davy’s Agricultural Chemistry, p. 133.—According to Mr. Knight the best potatoes, such as the Irish apple, possess much greater specific gravity than the inferior sorts, and this variety yields nearly 20 per cent. of starch; while five pounds of the variety called Captain Hart, yields 12 ounces of starch, and the Moulton White nearly as much, the Purple Red give only 8½, the Ox Noble 8¼. There is much more profit in cultivating the former than the latter sorts; but even the best kinds degenerate, and new sorts must be procured, as if to stimulate the ingenuity of man, by preventing his enjoying the gifts of God, without constant exertion, and observation of the laws which the Creator has impressed upon his productions. See the Observations of Thomas Andrew Knight, and the experiments now making by Mr. Maund, of Bromsgrove.
[L] Duncan. Sacred Philosophy of the Seasons.
[M] Carpenter’s Physiology.