Grain (unit)

“ Wheat Grain is the most valuable of seeds, as it contains, in admirably adjusted proportions, the bone, the fat, and the muscle-forming principles. In the form of bread, it has been, not inaptly, termed the "staff of life," for no other grain is so well adapted, per se, for the sustenance of man; and many millions of human beings subsist almost exclusively on it. The lower animals are in general fed upon the grain of oats, of barley, and of the leguminous plants, and the use of wheat is almost completely restricted to the human family. ”

“ Not one must be lost and every inch of ground must be put to use. The grain along the margin, for a breadth of sixteen inches, had been gathered into handfuls and skillfully tied, each with an unpulled barley stem, without breaking the straw, thus permitting even the grains in that head to fill and be gathered with the rest, while the tying set all straws well aslant, out of the way, and permitted the last inch of naked ground to be fitted without injuring the grain. ”

“ It is evident that every species of corn must have been originally the spontaneous production of the earth; but as the grain, previous to cultivation, would grow but scantily, its importance as food might long escape observation, and mankind would naturally derive a more obvious, though less nutritive subsistence, from acorns, berries, and other fruits which were within their reach. ”

“ The general result of these is, that the whole grain uniformly contains a larger quantity, weight for weight, than the fine flour extracted from it does. The particular results in the case of wheat and Indian corn were as follows:—A thousand pounds of the whole grain and of the fine flour contained of muscular matter respectively,—
Of the material out of which the animal muscle is to be formed, the whole meal or grain of wheat contains one-fifth more than the finest flour does. ”

“ There is good grain in plenty, but it is sowed along with the chaff and the tares, and now for the last harvesting the grain has germinated only to dwindle and die, for the tares have sprung up and choked it and the red garnering is of tares alone. ”

“ It is true that it does not take very much grain to sustain a man and his wife and a few children, if he is prudent with it; but then it requires a certain quantity for every family, and when added together, we need a great deal of wheat and corn to sustain us here in these mountains. ”

“ A single grain of true wheat may be the fruitful parent of grand harvests to come—of a handful of grain at first, each corn of which, fructifying in turn, will yield more and more until, as the years pass on, whole fields of waving gold will mark their increase.
Look carefully, dear ones, for the little grains of true corn in your natures. The little grain of love to God will grow if you let your hearts dwell on the thought of His great love for you. ”

“ Another farmer with whom we talked, pulling his crop of wheat, would follow this with millet and soy beans in alternate rows. His yield of wheat was expected to be eleven to twelve bushels per acre, his beans twenty-one bushels and his millet twenty-five bushels which, at the local prices for grain and straw, would bring a gross earning of $35, gold, per acre.
Before reaching the end of our walk through the fields toward the next station we came across another of the many instances of the labor these people are willing to perform for only a small possible increase in crop. ”

“ If we could obtain a variety of wheat of good quality, which, instead of two tons of straw and one of wheat to the acre, produced a ton and a half of each, it might be profitably cultivated, and the differences in the chemical composition of grain and straw are not so very great as to make me despair of this being done some time or other. ”

“ The seed-cups ordinarily used in drilling wheat are so large that they deliver in bunches of grains, consisting of six or seven, which fall together within a very small area, from which a less produce will be obtained than if it had been occupied by a single grain. The additional grains are thus not only wasted, but are positively injurious. By using seed-cups which are only large enough to contain one grain at a time, a stream of single grains is delivered, and the desired object, viz., the depositing of grains singly, at once attained. ”

“ None of the Old World cereals can be cultivated without much more industry and intelligence. At the same time, when Indian corn is sown in tilled land it yields with little labour more than twice as much food per acre as any other kind of grain. ”

“ The millers and dealers, who of course made their profits in these times, did frequently grind up the whole corn without separating the grain from the husks, and the shell of a grain of Indian corn does not, when ground, become soft flour. ”

“ The corn in general use for horses, sheep, and cattle, in called gram; [23] the flavour resembles our field pea much more than grain. It is produced on creepers, with pods; and bears a pretty lilac blossom, not unlike peas, or rather vetches, but smaller; the grain, however, is as large as a pea, irregularly shaped, of a dark brown skin, and pale yellow within. There are several other kinds of grain in use amongst the Natives for the use of cattle; one called moat, [24] of an olive green colour. ”

“ The bread stuffs, as they are popularly termed, particularly wheat and wheat flour, maize, and rice, form very important articles of commerce, and enter largely into cultivation in various countries for home consumption and export. Russia, India, and the United States, carry on a very considerable trade in grain with other countries. Our local production being insufficient for food and manufactures, we import yearly immense quantities of grain and flour. ”

“ On this supposition, eight pounds of wheat yield seven of flour consumed by man, and one of pollard and bran which are given to animals—chiefly to poultry and pigs. If the whole meal be used, however, eight pounds of flour will be obtained, or eight people will be fed by the same weight of grain which only fed seven before. ”

“ He has a small grist mill and threshing mill, with which he threshes and grinds his grain. By grinding his wheat twice it makes a fair article of flour, but his facilities for bolting it are not quite up to the times, consequently his flour is not quite so white as our high grade flour, but it makes good bread, nevertheless. ”

“ This most important constituent is subject to great variation in wheat, so much so that this grain grown in one locality makes a light bread, while that from another, in the same hands and under the same treatment, yields a heavy bread, and of poor quality. No one doubts that much improvement may be made in the milling of corn—as much, perhaps, as has been recently effected in that of wheat. ”

“ Different experiments always vary slightly as to the amount of grain required to make a certain growth. But taking the most advantageous ration that we can prepare with milk and corn as shown by these experiments, we may conclude that something like 300 pounds of grain and 500 pounds of milk will make one hundred pounds of growth on one hundred pound hogs, and that about 350 pounds of grain fed to hogs on pasture will make the same amount of growth. Let each farmer figure out what pasture and grain cost him and he can get approximately the real value of skim milk. ”

“ For it is a fair computation that every acre of land devoted to the production of meat is capable of becoming the source at three or four times the amount of produce of equivalent value of food, if devoted to the production of grain. In other words, a given area of land cropped with cereals and legumes will support a population more than three times as numerous as that which can be sustained on the same land devoted to the growth of cattle.” Of late Sir Henry Thompson seems to have overlooked this very important consideration. ”

“ The merchants watch the grain all day, and if they are forced to go away at nightfall they smooth the hills out and make cabalistic marks upon them so that they can easily tell if their property has been disturbed during their absence. The most common grains sold here are wheat, barley, and dura. The last named is ground to a flour either in hand mills or between stones moved about by bullocks or camels, and is eaten in the shape of round loaves of about the circumference of a tea plate and perhaps two inches thick. ”

“ The following table, giving the average yield of grain, reduced to pounds per acre, shows not only how the substitution of one cereal for another might affect the total production of cereal grains, but also suggests to the young farmer how he may modify the total product of his farm:
Yields will vary relatively in different regions and with different types of soil, and should be studied with reference to one’s conditions. ”

“ It is absolutely certain, if wheat will not grow with care and industry, and all the usual appliances of good husbandry, where it once nourished successfully, there is one or more ingredients wanted, in such a condition, that the plants can appropriate them to their own nourishment. And first of the inorganic matters.
The proportion of straw will vary from 2 to 31⁄2 times the weight of the grain. Suppose the quantity taken off the land be estimated at 21⁄2 times the weight of the grain. ”

“ The baseline of our weights and measures is to be found in a single grain of corn, such as would seem to be Nature's gift—the staff of life! It was a natural standard for agriculturists, who would be the first to use it, to adopt. ”

“ The production of thought parallels the production of grain. An acre of ground, that yields thirty bushels or eighteen hundred pounds of wheat, may easily grow two whole tons of straw and chaff. These latter are absolutely necessary to the formation of the wheat kernel; yet the consumer usually has little use for them ”

“ Among the enemies we should not forget to mention various weeds that spring up in the fields and endeavor to choke out the legitimate occupants of the soil.
The nutritive value and chemical composition of wheat grain are important points worthy of consideration here, because this general article is to be followed by one upon the culinary aspects of the grain treated. The market value of a flour largely rests upon its appearance, while the nutritive value depends upon the results determined by the analytical chemist. ”

“ The return for sowing of all kinds of grain, notably wheat, corn, barley, is calculated, on an average, to be fifty to a hundred-fold, while the date palm flourishes with scarcely any cultivation at all. ”

“ A plentiful crop of wheat, especially if it continues for several years in succession, lowers the price not only of wheat, but of every other [Pg 13] grain crop in the country, and consequently raises the price of every article of commerce when measured by the amount given for it in any of these grain crops. ”

“ Bread made from the entire wheat is looked upon with far more favor than formerly, and it is no longer necessary to use the crude products of the grain for its manufacture, since modern invention has worked such a revolution in milling processes that it is now possible to obtain a fine flour containing all the nutritious elements of the grain. ”

“ There is no grain more prolific than wheat, Nature having bestowed upon it this quality, as being the substance which she destined for the principal nutriment of man. A modius of36 wheat, if the soil is favourable, as at Byzacium,199 a champaign district of Africa, will yield as much as one hundred and fifty200 modii of grain. ”

“ Another serious objection to the imperfect methods of the ordinary farm in grain-feeding is, that the grain is fed in a too concentrated form; the fact being unknown, or disregarded, that the thrift of the fattening animal depends largely on the intimate admixture of ground grain With coarse forage; and that hay, also, must be chopped, and more thoroughly intermingled with it, for the attainment of the best results. ”

“ From time immemorial wheat has been reduced to flour by grinding it between heavy disks of stone set upon a shaft, the upper one of which revolved, while the nether one remained stationary. The grain, being introduced through an opening in the center of the upper stone, was ground between the burred surfaces of the stones, and gradually found its way outward, until it was discharged from the periphery or skirt of the stones in the form of flour. ”

“ But suffice it to be, that, with all the lacks and inconveniences, now extant, grain is raised so easy, that a man may live as well on three day's work in a week, here, as on six in some other distant places. It is not uncommon for wheat, when ripe, to be let to cut and thresh at the half. Corn at 20 cents per bushel, and wheat at 40, are, however the lowest selling prices latterly; and I conclude, that from the great quantity of corn and wheat, or flour, necessary to supply the garrison, it will never be lower. ”

“ Among the tribes of Northern Africa a more complete system of preserving grain prevails. “The Arabs, in lieu of granaries, preserve all their grain in pits: forty or fifty of these are made, each to contain about a thousand bushels: the spot selected is a dry, sandy soil, the hole being formed in the shape of a large earthen jug, the sides are plastered with mortar about a foot in thickness, and the wheat or grain filled up to the mouth, which is left just large enough for a man to get in at, and is about three feet below the surface of the ground ”

“ The grain in both cases is good.
In Mid-Lothian, one farmer assures himself, from trials, that he will reap 8 quarters of wheat per Scotch acre of good quality. And another says, that, altogether, he never had so great a crop since he was a farmer. ”