useful as food for horned cattle, which, from the sac charine quality of the plants, will thrive upon them.

The ears are preserved in bins or cages which are called corn-cribs, sometimes with the husk and at other times without it, and it is not considered good farming to shell the corn before it is required to be sent to market. This operation of shelling is very easily performed. The only implement required for the purpose is a piece of iron in shape like a sword-blade, the edge of which is not sharp, and this iron being fixed across the top of a tub in which the shelled grains are to be collected, the ear is taken

in both hands and scraped lengthwise smartly across the edge of the iron until all the grains are removed. In this manner, it is said, an industrious man will shell from twenty to twenty-five bushels of corn in the course of the day. The cobb which remains makes a very tolerable quick-burning fuel, and thus no part of the plant proves altogether without use.

The grain forms one-half the measure of the ear, that is to say, two bushels of ears will yield one bushel of shelled corn. So correct is this estimate found to be, that in the markets of the United States, where Indian corn is sold both shelled and with the cobb, two bushels of the latter are taken without question by the purchaser, as being equal to one bushel of shelled grain.

An amusing, and in many respects an instructive book, was published a few years since upon the merits of Indian corn, by one whose sanguine wishes upon, the subject of its introduction as a corn-plant into England, led him farther than most people have been inclined to accompany him. There is to be seen in the work here referred to a very minute and interesting account of all the various processes which must be attended to by the maize-grower before his grain is ready for sale, as well as very minute directions for turning the produce to the best and most agreeable account in family economy*. Although the public mind seems at present to be differently impressed upon the matter, it does not appear very improbable that some hardy variety of this plant may at no very distant day be regularly cultivated in some parts, at least, of England, and in Ireland. Sir Richard Bulkely, who obtained some seed from Brandenburgh, sowed it in the last-mentioned island, and it is recorded that his produce was exceedingly great, fully equal indeed to anything asserted of

* A Treatise on Cobbett's Corn, by W. Cobbett.

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Mexican fecundity. Might not this grain be gradually introduced, to the advantage of that portion of the kingdom, affording to the peasantry a more nourishing food than that upon which the bulk of them are now constrained to subsist? That Indian corn is well qualified to form the entire food-if that were necessary of a people, is amply ex emplified by the Mexicans, the great bulk of whom seldom partake of any other description.

Captain Lyon, in the narrative of his travels in Mexico, has given an amusing account of the mode of preparing tortillas, a species of cake made with the crushed grains of maize, which is eaten hot at the meals of all classes of people, the more wealthy using the cakes in the way we are accustomed to use wheaten bread,—as an auxiliary to more nourishing aliments-and the peasants being fain to enjoy them as a substantive food, seasoning them, when they have the opportunity, by the addition of chilies stewed into a kind of sauce, wherein the tortillas are dipped. Simple as the art may appear of thus making an unleavened cake with moistened flour, some persons are found to acquire a greater degree of expertness in it than others; and so great is the necessity for their preparation, and the desire of having them well concocted, that according to Captain Lyon, “in the houses of respectable people, a woman, called from her office Tortillera, is kept for the express purpose; and it sounds very oddly to the ear of a stranger during meal-times, to hear the rapid patting and clapping which goes forward in the cooking-place, until all demands are satisfied.*"

The various uses to which the maize plant and grain may be applied cannot perhaps be better enumerated than in the words of Dr. Franklin, a man accustomed to make a sober estimate upon every *Lyon's Mexico, vol. ii. p. 136.

subject that fell under his observation; and who, however enthusiastic he might be in the cause of virtue and rational freedom, never suffered himself to be betrayed into exaggeration, or to be carried away by a too sanguine imagination in affairs connected with the business of life.

"It is remarked in North America, that the English farmers, when they first arrive there, finding a soil and climate proper for the husbandry they have been accustomed to, and particularly suitable for raising wheat, they despise and neglect the culture of maize or Indian corn; but observing the advantage it affords their neighbours, the older inhabitants, they by degrees get more and more into the practice of raising it; and the face of the country shows from time to time that the culture of that grain goes on visibly augmenting.

"The inducements are the many different ways in which it may be prepared so as to afford a wholesome and pleasing nourishment to men and other animals. First, the family can begin to make use of it before the time of full harvest; for the tender green ears, stripped of their leaves, and roasted by a quick fire till the grain is brown, and eaten with a little salt or butter, are a delicacy. Secondly, when the grain is riper and harder, the ears, boiled in their leaves and eaten with butter, are also good and agreeable food. The tender green grains dried may be kept all the year, and, mixed with green haricots (kidney beans), also dried, make at any time a pleasing dish, being first soaked some hours in water, and then boiled. When the grain is ripe and hard there are also several ways of using it. One is to soak it all night in a lessive or lye, and then pound it in a large wooden mortar with a wooden pestle; the skin of each grain is by that means skinned off, and the farinaceous part left whole, which being

boiled swells into a white soft pulp, and eaten with milk, or with butter and sugar, is delicious. The dry grain is also sometimes ground loosely, so as to be broken into pieces of the size of rice, and being winnowed to separate the bran, it is then boiled and eaten with turkies or other fowls, as rice. Ground into a finer meal, they make of it by boiling a hasty pudding or bouilli, to be eaten with milk, or with butter and sugar; this resembles what the Italians call polenta. They make of the same meal, with water and salt, a hasty cake, which being stuck against a hoe or other flat iron, is placed erect before the fire, and so baked to be used as bread. Broth is also agreeably thickened with the same meal. They also parch it in this manner. An iron pot is filled with sand, and set on the fire till the sand is very hot. Two or three pounds of the grain are then thrown in, and well mixed with the sand by stirring. Each grain bursts and throws out a white substance of twice its bigness. The sand is separated by a wire sieve, and returned into the pot to be again heated and repeat the operation with fresh grain. That which is parched is pounded to a powder in mortars. This being sifted will keep long for use. An Indian will travel far and subsist long on a small bag of it, taking only six or eight ounces of it per day mixed with water. The flour of maize, mixed with that of wheat, makes excellent bread, sweeter and more agreeable than that of wheat alone. To feed horses, it is good to soak the grain twelve hours, they mash it easier with their teeth, and it yields them more nourishment. The leaves stripped off the stalks after the grain is ripe, tied up in bundles when dry, are excellent forage for horses, cows, &c. The stalks, pressed like sugar-cane, yield a sweet juice, which being fermented and distilled yields an excellent spirit; boiled without fermentation, it