tions.

Under the first head, that of farinaceous seeds, are included wheat, rye,
oats, Indian corn, rice, and a variety of less-known grains, all
possessing in greater or less degree the same constituents. It will be
impossible to more than touch upon many of them; and wheat must stand as
the representative, being the best-known and most widely used of all
grains. Each one is made up of nitrogenous compounds, gluten, albumen,
caseine, and fibrine, gluten being the most valuable. Starch, dextrine,
sugar, and cellulose are also found; fatty matter, which gives the
characteristic odor of grain; mineral substances, as phosphates of lime
and magnesia, salts of potash and soda, and silica, which we shall shortly
mention again.

_Hard Wheat_, or that grown in hot climates and on fertile soil, has much
more nitrogen than that of colder countries. In hard wheat, in a hundred
parts, twenty-two will be of nitrogen, fifty-nine starch, ten dextrine,
&c, four cellulose, two and a half of fatty matter, and three of mineral,
thus giving many of the constituents found in animal food.

This wheat is taken as bread, white or brown, biscuits, crackers, various
preparations of the grain whether whole or crushed, and among the Italians
as _macaroni_, the most condensed form of cereal food. The best macaroni
is made from the red wheat grown along the Mediterranean Sea, a hot summer
and warm climate producing a grain, rich, as already mentioned, in
nitrogen, and with a smaller proportion of water than farther north. The
intense though short summer of our own far North-west seems to bring
somewhat the same result, but the outer husk is harder. This husk was for
years considered a necessity in all really nutritious bread; and a
generation of vegetarians taking their name from Dr. Graham, and known as
Grahamites, conceived the idea of living upon the wheaten flour in which
husk and kernel were ground together. Now, to stomachs and livers brought
to great grief by persistent pie and doughnuts and some other New-England
wickednesses, these husks did a certain office of stimulation, stirring up
jaded digestions, and really seeming to arrest or modify long-standing
dyspepsia. But they did not know what we do, that this outer husk is a
layer of pure silica, one of the hardest of known minerals. Boil it six
weeks, and it comes out unchanged. Boil it six years, or six centuries,
and the result would be the same. You can not stew a grindstone or bring