Grain

“ The ear of wheat returns a hundredfold the grain from which it grew. The surface of the earth offers to us far more than we can consume—the grains, the seeds, the fruits, the animals, the abounding products are beyond the power of all the human race to devour. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In fact, it is just this stubbornness of grain which renders them beautiful, for, by running in all directions, interlacing the fibres, so that the end of the grain is alternately presented side by side with the parallel grain, the light is caught and retained on dead surfaces that absorb it, making those beautiful contrasts which the most uncultivated admire. ”

“ GRAIN. To dream of regular fields of ripe grain is a good omen, as it is a sign of thrift: if the grain is broken down or imperfect, it shows trouble with the thrift: if it is mouldy or mildewed, you will experience losses. An abundance of grain in bulk is likewise a sign of plenty; but scattered grain is the reverse of this. ”

“ Everywhere the grain stood ripe and the hot afternoon was full of the smell of the ripe wheat, like the smell of bread baking in an oven. The breath of the wheat and the sweet clover passed him like pleasant things in a dream. ”

“ Many of our farmers are like the alchemists of old,—they are searching for the miraculous seed,—the means, which, without any further supply of nourishment to a soil scarcely rich enough to be sprinkled with indigenous plants, shall produce crops of grain a hundred-fold. ”

“ To his surprise, I replied that our thanks were due to the pioneers, for though some had no doubt digested much of the grain, the fattest and best grains remained for the man of to-day who knew where to look. The good grain that is left can no longer be picked up without trouble. ”

“ We know that a grain of wheat planted in the ground will, under the influence of the sunshine and rain, send forth a blade, and then a stalk, and then the full head, because there is behind the grain of wheat a force irresistible and constantly at work. ”

“ Now, it is self-evident, that that food must be the most nourishing which supplies all these ingredients of the body most abundantly on the whole, or in proportions most suited to the actual wants of the individual animal to which it is given.
How stands the question, then, in regard to this point between the brown bread and the white—the fine flour, and the whole meal of wheat?
The grain of wheat consists of two parts, with which the miller is familiar—the inner grain and the skin that covers it. The inner grain gives the pure wheat flour; the skin, when separated, forms the bran. ”

“ Whilst immense tribes of creatures devour the amylaceous fecula in the grain, as nature produces it, man knows how to give it different forms, from the most simple boiling to the most complicated delicacies of the arts of the confectioner and pastry-cook. ”

“ There can be no doubt but that herds of cattle and fields of grain will crown the labours of those who may form establishments in this charming territory, where maize, wheat, rice, and plantains, the daily bread of the four quarters of the globe, will be produced in abundance to reward the labour of the husbandman. ”

“ It must be remembered that these percentages are given for the whole grain, and that the amounts of the nutrients in the manufactured product depend upon the process employed.
Manufacture of cereal food materials. [12] —The primitive method of making the material in the grain available for use was by grinding the grain between two stones, or by pounding one stone upon another, and this method is used by the Mexicans and certain of the American Indians to this day, human muscle being the power employed. ”

“ Now, when you have been in the country, you have observed the wheat growing in the field. If you had been careful to examine it, you would have found that while the wheat is growing the grain is enclosed in a thin covering called chaff, just the same as Indian corn or sweet corn is enclosed by the husks which grow about it. So it is with us; while we are in this world, there are many things which are essential to our growth and well-being. They minister to our physical needs and supply our temporal wants. ”

“ Of modern weights in ordinary use, the grain, represented by a barley-corn, and the carat, adapted from the seed of the pea, have descended without alteration from the Arabs to our goldsmiths and jewellers. ”

“ The threshing and winnowing of grain, which forms so important a part of the winter operations of a farm, naturally lead our author to describe and figure the different species of corn plants and their varieties, and to discuss their several nutritive values, the geographical range and distribution of each, and the special uses or qualities of the different varieties. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ He asks why a grain of corn gives rise in its turn to a grain of corn and not to an olive, thus raising a plexus of problems, which, despite the progress of modern science, still baffle the acutest thinkers of the present day. ”

“ Among these are the gradual disappearance of various kinds of grain as one advanced towards the north; the use of fermented liquors made from corn and honey; and the habit of threshing out their corn in large covered barns, instead of on open threshing-floors as in Greece and Italy, on account of the want of sun and abundance of rain. ”

“ It being the time of harvest when this view was taken, and the corn gathered in, the mode of treading out the grain by the feet of cattle, is represented in the foreground, and also the collecting and winnowing it; all which operations are performed in the open air. ”

“ A useful and nutritious grain, cultivated in immense quantities in India, China, and most eastern countries; in the West Indies, Central America, and the United States; and in southern Europe. It forms the principal food of the people of eastern and southern Asia, and is more extensively consumed than any other species of grain, not even excepting wheat. ”

“ The Board of Agriculture, in order to ascertain what each of the various sorts of grain employed as substitutes for bread-corn 56would produce, when ground into flour, with only the broad bran taken out, caused a bushel of each of the undermentioned sorts of seeds to be ground for their inspection: the weight of the grain, as well as the bran and the flour, was as follows:
A bushel of wheat, upon an average, weighs sixty-one pounds; when ground, the meal weighs 603⁄4 lbs. ”

“ There is one more advantage beyond ordinary inquiries, of consequence, where so much grain is raised as in this valley; be the grain ever so ripe, there is no waste of grain by any agitation of the straw, and all the waste which can take place must arise from the handling and shaking in binding. ”

“ By corn, in its enlarged sense, the farmer means all such crops as are grown for their seeds; so that all kinds of grain and pulse, such as peas and beans, belong to the corn crop, as distinguished from roots and green crops. ”

“ Here the grain is being brought and paid for; mills driven by horse and ass (or mule) power are busy; men are sieving out the bran from the flour by hand (bolters) ; bakers are moulding loaves on a board; an oven of domelike shape is being charged by means of a shovel (peel) ; and baskets of bread are being weighed on the one hand and carried off on men’s backs on the other. ”

“ How does he know what kind of grain he will reap at harvest time? Does wheat ever produce oats? Or clover seed produce wheat? What happened while the farmer slept? Who sowed the tares in his field? Who sows the tares in our minds? What do we call these tares? Should they be removed or permitted to grow? Should we be thankful to our parents for preventing tares from being sown? In what kind of soil did the grain grow to a fruitage of thirty, sixty and an hundred fold?
[192]
REAPING. THE HARVEST TIME OF LIFE.
Suggestion:—The object used is a small sheaf of grain. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Before we can ascertain these conditions, we must know more than we yet do of the quality of our own grain. Some, grown in the best way on the best soils, is sound and good: much more, it is to be feared, will turn out ill,—blighted, damp, shrunken,—needing a large admixture of hard old wheat, if it can be made into flour at all. ”

“ The flour from which it is made is prepared by an American process, which removes the outer coat of the grain—a silicious matter wholly indigestible—without injuring or removing the internal coat, which is the most nutritious part of the grain. ”

“ The grain should be harvested when it is ripe: it is considered that under normal conditions and in an easy field one man should reap almost a jugerum a day and still have time to carry the grain in baskets to the threshing floor. ”

“ It is necessary that the grain should be deposited in the earth, and the intruding beasts kept off and noxious weeds destroyed; the munificent Deity performs the rest. He sends the rain and the dew to fertilize the soil and give vigor to the tender plants, and causes the sun to ripen and perfect the fruit. ”

“ The simplest method by which grain can be reduced to meal, or flour, is rubbing or pounding it between two stones; and this was probably the one first practised in all primitive conditions of society, as it is still pursued among some tribes of uncivilized men. ”

“ The grain, after having been taken to the top story of the mill and blown and sieved, is divested of its paddy or husks by passing it over a sieve having a jumping action or tapping motion at the bottom, or by being carried between stones like those usually employed for grinding wheat. ”

“ From this table, assuming that a crop of matured grain contains 11 per cent of water and the straw 15 per cent, while potatoes contain 79 per cent and beets 87 per cent, the amounts of the three plant food elements removable annually by 1000 pounds of crop have been calculated and stated in the next table. ”

“ What the colour of it? Upon what grounds it is used? What time of the year it is to be laid on? How many loads to an Acre? What Grains Marled Land will bear, and how many years together? How such Marled Land is to be used afterwards, &c?
7. The kinds of Grain or Seed, usual in England being supposed to be either Wheat, Miscelane, Rye, Barley, Oats, Pease, Beans, Fitches, Buck wheat, Hemp, Flax, Rape; We desire to know, what sorts of Grains are sown in your Country, and how each of these is prepared for Sowing? Whether by steeping, and in what kind of Liquor? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Frequent trials have also been made of the comparative power of large and small, plump and thin grains, and, in the case of oats, which produce a small grain attached to a large one, trials as to their respective powers—with uniform results, viz., that, in good grains of the same pedigree, neither mere size nor situation in the ear supplies any indication of the superior 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 thirty to eighty bushels of corn and forty of wheat are usually raised from an acre in all the prairies where the soil has been subdued by previous cultivation. Every other kind of grain as well as vegetables are produced in about the same proportion. ”

“ Grain of all kinds, wheat, barley, millet, zea, and other sorts, grew in abundance; the wheat commonly yielded thirty for one. Besides the vine and the olive, the almond, the date, figs of many kinds, the orange, the pomegranates, and many other fruit-trees, flourished in the greatest luxuriance. ”

“ When a crop is sown, a handful of grain is sprinkled over a stone in the corner of the field nearest to the temple, in order that the god may protect the growing crop from hail, blight, and the ravages of wild beasts; and at harvest he receives the first-fruits in order that he may save the garnered grain from the inroads of rats and insects.333 Among the hill tribes near [pg 118] Rajamahall, in India, when the kosarane grain is being reaped in November or early in December, a festival is held as a thanksgiving before the new grain is eaten. ”

“ A Farmer had just sown a field of wheat, and was keeping a careful watch over it, for numbers of Rooks and starlings kept continually settling on it and eating up the grain. ”