appointed in old time for servants, slaves, and the inferior kind of people to feed upon. Hereunto, likewise, because it is drie and brickle in the working, some add a portion of rie-meale in our time, whereby the rough drinesse thereof is somewhat qualified, and then it is named mescelin, that is, bread made of mingled corne." In the household book of Sir Edward Coke, in 1596, we find constant entries of oatmeal for the use of the house, besides "otmell to make the poore folkes porage," and "rie-meall, to make breade for the poore." The household wheaten bread was partly baked the house and partly taken of the baker. In that year it appears, from the historian Stow, that there was a great fluctuation in the price of corn; and he particularly mentions the price of oatmeal, which would indicate that it was an article of general consumption, as well in a liquid form, as in that of the oat-cakes of the north of England.

In 1626, Charles I., upon an occasion of subjecting the brewers and maltsters to a royal license, declared that the measure was "for the relief of the poorer sort of his people, whose usual bread was barley; and for the restraining of innkeepers and victuallers, who made their ale and beer too strong and heady." The grain to be saved by the weakness of the beer was for the benefit of the consumers of barley-bread.

At the period of the Revolution (1689) wheaten bread formed, in comparison with its present consumption, a small proportion of the food of the people of England. The following estimate of the then produce of the arable land in the kingdom tends to prove this position. This estimate was made by Gregory King, whose statistical calculations have generally been considered entitled to credit.

At the commencement of the last century wheaten bread became much more generally used by the labouring classes, a proof that their condition was improved. In 1725, it was even used in poorhouses, in the southern counties*. The author of "Three Tracts on the Corn Trade," published at the beginning of the reign of George III., says, "It is certain that bread made of wheat is become much more generally the food of the common people since 1689, than it was before that time; but it is still very far from being the food of the people in general." He then enters into a very curious calculation, the results of which are as follow: "The whole number of people is 6,000,000, and of those who eat Wheat, the number is,

Barley

3,750,000

739,000

Rye

888,000

.

Oats.

This calculation applies only to England and Wales. Of the number consuming wheat, the proportion assigned to the northern counties of York, Westmoreland, Durham, Cumberland, and Northumberland, is only 30,000. Eden, in his History of the Poor, says, 66 About fifty years ago (this was written in 1797), so small was the quantity of wheat used in the county of Cumberland, that it was only *Eden, vol. i. p. 562.

a rich family that used a peck of wheat in the course of the year, and that was used at Christmas. The usual treat for a stranger was a thick oat-cake (called haver-bannock) and butter. An old labourer of eighty-five remarks that when he was a boy he was at Carlisle market with his father, and wishing to indulge himself with a penny loaf made of wheatflour, he searched for it for some time, but could not procure a piece of wheaten bread at any shop in the town."

At the time of the Revolution, according to the estimate of Gregory King, 14,000,000 bushels of wheat were grown in England. In 1828, according to the estimate of Mr. Jacob, in his Tracts on the Corn Trade, 12,500,000 quarters, or 100,000,000 bushels, were grown. The population of England at the Revolution was under five millions, so that each person consumed about three bushels annually. The population, at the present time, is under fifteen millions, so that each person consumes about seven bushels annually.

CHAPTER IV.

THE principal cereal plants which cannot be profitably cultivated in Great Britain, but upon which the inhabitants of other countries depend for subsistence in even a greater degree than the English peasantry depend upon the supply of wheat, are rice, maize, and millet. The seeds of these plants are less palatable than wheat, and less nutritious than that or any other of the cerealia already described: the chief cause of this last mentioned inferiority appears to be the absolute absence of gluten from their composition.

The three grains just mentioned will be treated of in the order wherein they are here set down, which is likewise the order of their importance, considered with reference to the number of human beings who draw from them their sustenance.

RICE-Oryza sativa. This is a panicled grass, bearing, when in ear, a nearer resemblance to barley than to any other of the corn-plants grown in England. The seed grows on separate pedicles springing from the main stalk; each grain is terminated with an awn or beard, and is inclosed in a rough yellow husk, the whole forming a spiked panicle. The stalk is not unlike that of wheat, but the joints are more The farina of rice is almost entirely composed of starch, having little or no gluten, and being without any ready formed saccharine matter. The outer husk clings with great tenacity to the grain, and is only to be detached from it by passing the rice

numerous.

between a pair of mill-stones, placed at such a distance from each other as shall serve to remove the husk by friction, without crushing the grain. This is besides enveloped by a thin pellicle, which for the most part is rubbed off by trituration in large mortars, with pestles weighing from two to three hundred pounds.

There is little reason for doubting that this grain is of Asiatic origin. From the earliest records it has formed the principal, if not the only food of the great mass of the population on the continent and islands of India and throughout the Chinese empire.

The introduction of rice as an object of cultivation