jected to this
test,

100 grains of Milwaukie wheat lost 12.10 grains.
" " Guilderland (Holland) wheat lost 9.35 "
" " Polish Odessa red wheat " 10.55 "
" " Soft Russian wheat " 8.55 "
" " Kobanga wheat " 8.15 "

After an exposure of the dried samples to the air for two or three
days, they increased in weight from one to three grains in the
hundred originally employed.

Nineteen different samples of wheat flour, which lost by exposure to
the above heat from ten to fourteen grains in the one hundred, when
similarly exposed to the air for eighteen hours, again increased in
weight from 8.40 to 11.60 in the hundred grains originally employed.

These experiments show, what might indeed have been predicted as to
the general result, that wheat in grain, if not less liable to
injury than flour, yet if once properly dried, suffers much less
from a subsequent exposure to air and moisture.

It is now ascertained that in presence of a considerable proportion
of water, wheat flour under the influence of heat undergoes a low
degree at least of lactic fermentation, which will account for the
_souring_ of the ordinary samples when exposed to warm or humid
climates. The same result will inevitably follow from their careless
exposure in the holds of vessels. That this is particularly the case
with many of the cargoes of wheat flour shipped to Great Britain,
there is little reason to doubt. This may be partly owing to the
great humidity of the English climate, as the deterioration is
observed as well in the flour which is the produce of that country
as in that which is received from abroad.

It is stated by Mr. Edlin, quoted in an article on Baking, in the
_Encyclopaedia Britannica_, that, "as a general rule, the London
flour" is decidedly bad. The gluten generally wants the adhesiveness
which characterizes the gluten of good wheat."

I have observed that, in the analyses of some of the samples of
damaged flour, the proportions of what is set down under the head of
glucose and dextrine are unusually large. This is perhaps due to the
change produced in the starch by the action of diastase, and which
may under certain circumstances be formed in wheat flour. It would
se