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affords a pleasant syrup. In Mexico, fields are sown with it thick, that multitudes of small stalks may arise, which being cut from time to time, like asparagus, are served in desserts, and thin sweet juice extracted in the mouth by chewing them. The meal wetted is excellent food for young chickens, and the old grain for grown fowls

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In addition to the many uses enumerated by Franklin in the foregoing account, Humboldt acquaints us that the Mexican Indians, previous to the conquest of their country, were accustomed not only to express the sweet juice from maize-stalks for the purpose of fermenting it into an intoxicating liquor, but that they boiled down this juice to the consistence of syrup; giving it likewise as his opinion that they were able even to make sugar from this inspissated juice. In confirmation of this opinion, he recites a letter written by Cortez, who in describing to the Emperor Charles V. the various productions in both a natural and manufactured state which he found in the new country, asserts, that among these were seen "honey of bees and wax, honey from the stalks of maize, which are as sweet as sugar-cane, and honey from a shrub which the people call maguey. The natives make sugar from these plants, and this sugar they also sell." There is no question that the productions here enumerated will yield saccharine matter; but crystallized sugar, properly so called, is a different preparation, and, from our present knowledge, it is difficult to believe that any such substance could have been so prepared.

The Indians, at the period above alluded to, evinced considerable skill in the preparation of fermented liquors, which is by no means lost by the Mexicans of the present day. A chemist," says Humboldt, "would have some difficulty in preparing * Franklin's Works, vol. ii, pp. 276-8, 4to edition, 1818.

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the innumerable variety of spirituous, acid, or saccha rine beverages which the Indians display a peculiar address in making, by infusing the grain of maize, in which the saccharine matter begins to develope itself by germination. These beverages, generally known by the name of chicha, have some of them a resemblance to beer, and others to cyder." The spirituous liquor called pulque de mahis or tlaouili, which is prepared from juice expressed from the stalk of the maize, forms, in some parts of the republic, a very important article of commerce.

It has been said that Indian corn is free from all liability to disease. In contradiction of this, M. Roulin has asserted that a diseased state of this grain, similar in its nature to that described as incident to rye under certain circumstances, is not unfrequently met with in Columbia.

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The ill effects attributed to the ergot of maize, although serious, are however by no means of so fatal a character. Among the effects, all animals, including the human race, who partake of it, are subject to the shedding of their teeth and hair, and quadrupeds to the addi tional loss of their hoofs; fowls that have fed lay their eggs without shells. Its action, when administered medicinally, is said to be even more powerful than that of the ergot of rye. It must be remarked that in the narrative of no other traveller have we met with a similar statement, and that in other countries, where maize is quite as familiarly known as in Colombia, the disease has never been observed.

MILLET Species of Sorghum and Sitaria. These are true grasses, and naturally allied to one of the most numerous tribes. In light sandy soils, under the scorching rays of the sun, and in situations where sufficient moisture cannot be obtained for the

production of rice, millet is successfully cultivated. Sorghum forms a chief dependance of the people in some parts of India-through the arid districts of Arabia-in Syria, where it has been produced from the earliest periods-and in Nubia, whose inhabitants cultivate this almost to the exclusion of every other grain.

The seeds of Panicum millet are by much the smallest of any of the cereal plants, but the number borne upon each stalk is so exceedingly great as to counterbalance that disadvantage, and to render this equally productive with other of the culmiferous plants it is to this circumstance that its name, from mille, a thousand, has been ascribed.

Of this sort there are two modifications, distinguished by the form of their spike, one being composed of a single rachis, while the other is very much branched. The difference of form thus exhibited is of so marked a character that it can scarcely be viewed as a modification brought about by difference of culture.

Of each of these there are to be found some species which chiefly exhibit themselves as such by the varying colour of their grains, and by the circumstance of these being either naked or encrusted.

One kind of millet, the spike of which is compact, has been supposed to be a native of the north of Europe, and is commonly known-at least in this quarter of the globe-as GERMAN MILLET, Sitaria germanica. It is thought, however, that this variety was originally imported from India and acclimatized in Germany. Nor does it afford any direct evidence against this opinion, that seeds apparently of the same kind, brought from India, and subjected at once to the same culture, do not perfect their seeds; since it is well known that the habits of plants may be changed by slow degrees

to an extent quite sufficient to account for this variance. The stalk of this, and indeed of all the varieties of millet, resembles a jointed reed, having at every joint a long broad leaf embracing the stalk with its base. This variety rises to the height of three or four feet, and terminates in a compact spike about eight or nine inches long, somewhat thicker at the base than at the top, beset with small round grains, which adhere but slightly to the husk, and therefore are very liable to be shaken out when ripe. The use principally made of this grain is the feeding of poultry.

Italian Millet-Sitaria Italica. ITALIAN MILLET-Sitaria italica-bears a considerable resemblance to the variety just described.

This variety is decidedly a native of India, where it bears the name of congue. The plant is stronger, the spike and the seed are larger, and to bring it to maturity requires a warmer climate than suffices for German millet. The use to which this grain is brought in Tuscany, is that of feeding domestic fowls and animals, including horses. The larger species of animals are also fed upon the leaves and culms, of which last-mentioned portion brushes are likewise made. The Italians also make from the flour a kind of bread, which is dark coloured and coarse. Like those of maize, the seeds of both these varieties are of various colours.

PANICLED MILLET is the species most usually cultivated. The commonest variety, which botanists call Sorghum vulgare, is known by various names in the different districts where it is grown. In India it is called jovaree; in Egypt and Nubia dhourra; while in our West-Indian colonies it has received the name of Guinea corn, either because the seed was first conveyed thither from the western coast of Africa, or as some persons have affirmed, because of its extensive use in feeding the African negroes throughout those colonies. The height to which this plant attains varies according to the soil and culture. In Egypt its growth seldom exceeds five or six feet, while Burckhardt* speaks of the stalks of dhourra as being sixteen or twenty feet long. The leaves are thirty inches long, and two inches wide in the broadest part. The flowers, when they first come out in large panicles at the top of the stalk, resemble the male spikes of the maize plant. These flowers are succeeded by roundish seeds, the colour of which is, in some cases, a milky white, with a black umbilical dot; in others the seeds are red, but in both cases they are wrapped round with the chaff, and are *Travels in Nubia, p. 280.

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