tastefully packed under various names and conditions, such as cerealine, a delicate white chip; samp, a beautiful form of hominy; coraline, a gelatinised preparation; crystal rice, reminding one of popcorn; hominy grits, finely cracked maize; green corn, a favourite American dish; and corn flour, which in reality is maize starch, very largely used for making puddings, custards, and so forth. A large proportion of the starch made in England for laundry and other purposes is now produced from maize. In the United States not only are whisky and alcohol made from maize, but a kind of molasses and an inferior sugar are also produced from this cereal. Several years ago a St. Louis firm started the business of expressing oil from maize, and they state that they are able to get from a bushel of maize a gallon of clear amber-coloured oil. It should be mentioned that experiments made on the various kinds of maize grown show that this cereal is richer in oil than any other, containing as it does from 5 to 8 per cent. The oil is well adapted for illuminating purposes, giving a bright white flame, and developing in burning a quite high degree of heat. It is also advantageously used for dressing wool, as a machine oil, and in the manufacture of soap.

Maize in sundry forms is now extensively manufactured in mills specially built in different parts of the United Kingdom, in order to supply the prepared maize to brewers and distillers as well as to confectioners and jam boilers. Sometimes we come in contact with a product of maize in the form of glucose, and thus made the glucose is a valuable commodity, pure and wholesome. It may be that not a little of the golden syrup consumed in this country first entered the factory as glucose, and we know that all the honey sold is not the entire product of the busy bee. Glucose from maize even finds its way to the manufacturers of printers' rollers and into the tan yard. It will be remembered from the accounts published some years ago by Dr. Arthur Hill Hassall in his work "Adulterations Detected in Food and Medicine" that maize has been extensively employed to adulterate liquorice and-as already stated-oatmeal, mustard, and pepper. Maize flour of a low-grade quality has taken the place of low-grade wheaten flour in the manufacture of boots, where a quantity is required in faking up the soles with brown paper, inferior leather, &c.

Notwithstanding the many channels open to the extensive use of maize, this cereal was not consumed in any great quantity in the British Isles till the year of the potato famine in 1846, when 694,184 quarters were imported. Since then large and increasing quantities of maize have reached England, as shown in the following table, which gives the average annual imports of

maize into the United Kingdom from the year 1826 to the year 1897, divided into five periods of time, together with the highest and lowest quantity imported in each separate period :

According to the figures published in the Trade and Navigation Returns the imports for the year 1898 considerably surpass the figures as returned in 1897, for in the twelve months that ended with December last we imported 13,678,721 quarters.

In considering the nutritive value and usefulness of maize as a human food, it is necessary to inquire into the chemical composition of the cereal. From an elaborate series of published investigations, we have obtained the estimated average percentage composition of the cereals employed in bread-making as follows:

Average Composition of the Grain of Cereals.

In comparing the analyses of these cereals, attention may be directed to the differences in the percentages of oil or fat, to the varying quantities of starch, and to the fluctuations in the proportions of albuminoids. In wheat the albuminoids include the gluten, which plays such an important part in the process of bread-making; but in regard to the amount of the albuminoids in maize, it may be mentioned that the range of variation is not nearly so wide as that of the same constituent in wheat, but the material called zein, a principle analogous to gluten, has not the same power to make a light loaf

or is not developed to the same extent in the grain as gluten is in the wheat grain. Now one most remarkable fact in connection with the consumption of maize in this country is that it requires to be very judiciously eaten, must be well cooked and properly prepared, or the effects on the human body, no doubt due to a very great extent to climatic conditions, will be adverse. In those unaccustomed to its use maize as a food is considered to excite and to keep up a tendency to diarrhoea, and many complaints are heard from our prisons where it is almost exclusively used on certain days, while a good deal is consumed in Irish Poor Law dietaries.

Before considering the uses of maize as a food for live stock, it may be as well to call attention to a disease unknown prior to the first half of the eighteenth century, called pellagra, which is now common amongst the peasantry of Northern Italy, and occurs also amongst the same class in Corfu, Roumania, the Landes and Gironde in France, and Oviedo and elsewhere in Spain. The disease is not wholly due to poverty, as was at first supposed, but is traceable to the use of unwholesome maize, gathered before it is ripe and stored carelessly. It is strange, however, that in the native country of the maize plant, where it is so largely used as food, appearing on the table at every meal in a variety of forms, the consumers are not troubled in any way, not even with the symptoms of diarrhoea.

Concerning maize as a food for stock, we give below a table showing the percentage composition of maize fodder-that is, maize grown for fodder alone, and field-cured in the same manner as hay—and certain familiar forms of hay :

A good deal of maize is used in the United States to feed pigs, but in this country barley meal is generally preferred, though an increased quantity of maize has lately been given to hogs in England; but although pigs fatten well on maizemeal, by reason of climatic conditions the food does not seem to assimilate as well as in America, and the result is that the waste in cooking the pork or bacon is enormous, while the flesh

It

is not so good as when barley meal has been consumed. will be found, when employing artificial feeding stuffs, that maize must be used with great discretion in order that the fat on the animal may be not flabby but firm, and that the nitrogenous matter given to the stock in other foods may not be wasted.

Some persons have strongly advocated the introduction of maize into England as one of our regular crops, but in the majority of seasons this cereal, being of a sub-tropical habit, will not ripen in England. This, however, should not blind us to its value as a green crop. It admits of being sown much later than most other crops; from May 15 to 31 are the usual dates. Once started it grows very fast, and it can be cut green at any time during August and September that may suit the farmer. Unlike the white crops, it can be harvested in wet weather, and takes little or no harm if promptly ensiled with a small quantity of fenugreek or other sweetening condiment. It is rich in sugar, and cattle eat it greedily. Mr. John Bateman, at Brightlingsea, and the late Lord Tollemache, at Helmingham, grew it largely, and with unfailing success.

Somerleyton Road, S.W.

ROBERT W. DUNHAM.

THE MAKING OF THE LAND IN
ENGLAND:

A SECOND RETROSPECT.

It is only eleven years since this subject was treated in the Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society,' and it seems still one of sufficient interest and importance to justify some further remarks and illustrations. An opportunity for this is to be found in the recovery of 1,350 acres of land and swamp in a state of nature about 40 years ago, the inclosure award being dated December 19, 1861. The land in question was intercommonable of seven parishes, and its corporate existence would be found indicated in the map of Cambridgeshire under the extremely puzzling and unromantic title of Grunty Fen. It was a hollow surrounded on all sides by the low hills or" highgrounds," as they are called, of the seven interested parishes; it dipped to

The Making of the Land in England: a Retrospect. By Albert Pell, Journal R.A S.E., 2nd Series, Vol. XXIII., 1887, p. 355.

its lowest level towards the north, where was a tract of poor soil and pools for the most part swampy all the year round. Here was the natural gullet, formed by a dip in the high ground, through which the overflow of the stagnant water would discharge itself, but still leaving behind a depth sufficient to cover a very large portion of the Fen beyond the extent of the peat earth. Almost in the centre of the fen on its longer axis from east to west the surface rose a few feet, sufficiently high in places to escape flooding, but in winter time only to be reached by boat. Not a tree, not a shrub even of the meanest kind, broke the dreary monotony of its surface. Even the reeds were starved and not fine of their kind; only rushes and flags flourished at their best. Still at some early period it seems to have had attractions for our prehistoric forefathers.

On the surface, occasionally, a clean-cut, sharp, undamaged celt of the Neolithic period is picked up and forty years ago a magnificent gold torque peeped through the turf. A farmer crossing the common at night, the moon shining, was attracted by something glittering in his way. On working it out with his knife it proved to be a gold torque in perfect condition, the metal of which was worth fifty pounds. Later on, the spot seems to have found favour in the sight of the Roman conquerors of the country, for on the elevated ridge, out of the reach of the flood water, they established a very considerable pottery, extending at intervals over a length of nearly a mile. Here the cultivator has brought to light the sites of several kilns, remains of the foreign red ware in use for patterns, or it may be domestic service, with several new names of potters not heretofore recorded, hand mills either for grinding corn or paste for the finer description of ware, polishing stones and other materials of the craft. After their departure the tract must have been abandoned to a state of nature wholly unproductive and uncared for. Much of the surrounding land is of a good quality, some of it unusually good. On the summit of the low hills to the south, traces of early British sepulture are so marked as to lead to the conviction that some of the earliest settlements were formed there, attracted by fine springs of water and the rich fertile soil. Then followed the division of the surrounding belt into parishes with their manors and clusters of houses, seven parishes in all, immediately contiguous to the Fen which then in time became intercommonable, that is, used by the commoners of the seven parishes, and then only for the grazing of their live stock and for a supply of fuel, peat out of northern lowest portions and "turves" (slow of combustion) off the drier pasture land. The fowling and fishing was shared, no doubt, between