jsU&UA. 8h>€#~- Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2008 with funding from Microsoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/foodsbeveragesOOfoodrich Boston School levies THE INFORMATION READERS Number I. FOODS AND BEVERAGES BY E. A. BEAL, M.D. r BOSTON BOSTON SCHOOL SUPPLY COMPANY 15 B rom field Street I89I B4- Copyright, 1S91, By Boston School Supply Co. €DUCAT!ON DEFT, C. J. Peters & Son, Typographers and Electrotypers. Press of Berwick & Smitii. < C- PREFACE. To-day's school curriculum includes only one subject, Reading, in which the text -books have not kept pace with educational progress. There is no substantial difference between the old Amer- ican Readers, published sixty years ago, and any series now in use. Yet this fact should not cause surprise. One reading-book must resemble another, if both are merely compilations of extracts chosen for elocutionary purposes. Our present readers are, it is true, more sumptuous specimens of book-making, but children are not sent to school to admire book-covers or to look at pictures. No selections from Shakspeare and Milton have been culled for the Information Series. The books contain no "pieces to speak." Ex- cerpts on Constitutional Government, the Destiny of Man and other trivial subjects, must be looked for elsewhere. Nor is the text of the Infor- 543459 4 .....:: PREFACE. matiqn Readers.^- tissue of pretty stories. Means to waste the* 'precious hours of school life can readily be invented, if such waste be desired. No effort has been spared to render infor- mation attractive, indeed ; but the fundamental aim of the series has not been ignored in a single lesson. In these books elocution is subordinated to instruction, — such instruction as will aid the young learner to understand the life of the world around him. How many school graduates of this year can describe the sources from which food is obtained or can tell how it is marketed ? How many appreciate the importance of the rail- road as a factor in determining the cost of living in town or country ? How many have any knowl- edge of the processes employed in making cloth ? How many know how gas is manufactured ? or how steel is produced ? or how newspapers are printed ? To the educational public the editors of this series have endeavored to present reading-books the perusal of which will stimulate the percep- tive faculties of the pupil, store his mind with practical information, and interest him in vari- ous arts and occupations by which hundreds PREFACE. 5 of millions of persons earn their daily bread. Above all, it is hoped that the books will create and foster in the mind of every young reader a just appreciation of the nobility of manual labor. In the preparation of these volumes several dis- tinguished educators have shown the most friendly interest. The invaluable aid of their counsel and encouragement is gratefully acknowledged. E. A. B. H. W C. W. G. P. R. L. CONTENTS. LESSON PAGE I. The First Farming-Tool n II. The Oldest Occupation 14 III. Uncle Sam's Seed Barn 18 IV. An American Invention 22 V. An Ox-Task in Bible Times 25 VI. Grasses 28 VII. The. Miller's Methods 30 VIII. Tom's Letter 33 IX. Golden Ears 36 X. The Staff of Life 39 XL More about Bread 42 XII. A Machine Baker 45 XIII. Crackers 48 XIV. Cakes 50 XV. Three Kingdoms of Food 53 XVI. Pod Seeds 56 XVII. An Eatable Poison Root 59 XVIII. Some Vegetables 61 XIX. How We Eat Potash 64 XX. Dairy Products 66 XXI. The Complete Food 69 XXII. Butter and Oleomargarine 74 XXIII. Fat from Trees 79 XXIV. Cheese 83 XXV. What Others Eat 87 XXVI. The Animal Third in Value 91 8 CONTENTS. LESSON PAGE XXVII. The Best Fare 93 XXVIII. Prizes for Improvement 96 XXIX. Beef iod XXX. The Soul of the Farm 103 XXXI. Iced Meat ic6 XXXII. Other Modes of Preservation .... 109 XXXIII. A Frenchman's Plan in XXXIV. White Treasures 114 XXXV. Feathered Cheer 117 XXXVI. The Harvest of the Sea. ...... 120 XXXVII. Trawling 123 XXXVIII. Some Fish Sports 127 XXXIX. Money from Water 130 XL. An American Favorite 133 XLI. Finny Millionnaires 137 XLII. Meat without Bones ......... 140 XLIII. Mackerel 145 XLIV. Two Important Fishes 148 XLV. Other Fish to Fry 153 XLVI. United States Fisheries 157 XLVII. Pet and Pest 161 XLVIII. Our Flying Game 165 XLIX. Everybody's Choice 169 L. More about Fruit 174 LI. A Persian Present 177 LII. Guests from Asia 181 LIII. Stone Fruits 186 LIV. Products of the Vine 189 LV. Globes without Maps 194 LVI. Health Prfservers 199 LVII. Gifts from Abroad 204 LVIII. The Rubi 210 LIX. Sugar 215 LX. The Emperor's Prize 220 LXI. The Best Tree 225 CONTEXTS. 9 LESSON PAGE LXII. Five Saccharine Substances 228 LXIII. Other Sweet Things 232 LXIV. Salt 236 LXV. Sour and Sweet 240 LXVI. Condiments 244 LXV1I. The King's Spices 248 LXVIII. Tea 252 LXIX. Coffee 256 LXX. The Food of the Gods 261 LXXI. Waters 266 LXX 1 1. Turning Food into Poison 270 LXXI 1 1. A Baneful Beverage 273 LXXIV. The Iron Appraiser of Food 277 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. Lesson I. The First Farming-Tool. All through life we need food, rest, and shelter. If any one of us should be exposed to frost or rain for even one night, he would die, or, at least, become seriously ill. If we could not get food and drink, our bodies would waste away, strength and health would depart, and life for us would soon come to an end. The larger part of our daily food is vegetable in its nature, and comes mostly from crops harvested every year, such as potatoes and wheat. Each spring the ground must be prepared, and the seeds of the vegetables wanted must be sowed. Of course this statement is true only when made with reference to the cultivation of those plants which live through but one season. These are called annuals. A rhubarb root will produce stalks for several seasons, and an apple-tree will bear fruit many years. A few centuries ago farmers knew nothing of 12 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. plows, and at planting-time simply scratched fur- rows in the ground with pointed sticks, and dropped seeds in those inch-deep channels. As men grew wiser, however, they saw that larger harvests would be obtained if the soil could be stirred more deeply. Then the seeds would have more earth from which to draw moisture and nourishment. It was a great benefit to everybody, therefore, when some clever man thought of fastening two long handles to a short, heavy, pointed piece of hard wood, and of making oxen draw this curious plow through the ground. THE FIRST FARMING-TOOL. 1 3 In Europe and in the United States such a plow has not been seen for two hundred years, but in certain sections of Asia and of the American con- tinent south of our own country, it is used yet by simple-minded farmers. In those regions people are slow to understand the value of a new inven- tion, and keep to their old ways. By degrees the clumsy wooden plow was im- proved, until we have the almost perfect tool pic- tured on page 12. You must remember, though, that the changes and additions were made only one at a time. No machine or tool has ever been invented that was as good when first fashioned as it is now. The modern plow has only the frame of wood, all the parts that touch the earth being made of iron and steel. The most valuable improvement was the mold-board, devised in Holland about one hundred and fifty years ago. In this country horses are harnessed- to a plow two abreast, but in Europe they are often hitched one behind the other. When wild land is to be broken up for seeding, several teams of oxen are yoked to a large, heavy plow, called a prairie- breaker. The principal parts of an ordinary plow are : the Share and the Colter, both of steel ; these cut and raise a strip of land, termed the furrow- 14 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. slice ; the Mold-Board, which turns over the fur- row slice ; the Frame, with its Beam and Handles ; the Wheel, which regulates the depth of the plowing ; and the Clevis, to which the draft-power is applied. Every good plow has all these parts. Lesson II. The Oldest Occupation. In harvest time some portions of our great North-west are simply vast wheat-fields. One may ride for hours on the Northern Pacific Rail- road, and see yellow waving grain on every side as far as the eye can reach. How grand such a scene must be ! Suppose a farmer of North Dakota decides to sow twenty thousand acres with wheat. How will he prepare the land ? Not in the same way in which plowing is done in the East. On all large Western farms gang-plows are employed. These are merely six or eight plowshares bolted to a strong frame, which is generally made of iron. A seed- sower is fastened in front of the plow ; this sower scatters the seed, the plow covers it with earth, and the work is done. In the lighter soils a large gang-plow can put in ten acres of wheat in a day. THE OLDEST OCCUPATION. ■5 A gang-plow has no handles ; the plowman is, in fact, nothing but a driver, his sole business being to guide the eight horses drawing the plow. It is a striking sight to see ten eight-gang plows follow- ing one another over an immense plain, each plow- share cutting a furrow a mile long, perhaps, and leaving behind a track of land plowed and sowed. On heavier soils steam-plows are used. They are in appearance much like gang-plows, but, instead of being drawn by horses, you will see, by looking at the picture on this page, that a steam-plow is pulled across the field by a wire 16 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. rope. Of course the power that moves the plow is applied to the rope by the engine. The first steam-plow was operated in England in 1832. Great improvements have been made in it since then, however, and now in its best form it can do as much work as forty ordinary plows. Clayey ground requires to be cultivated or harrowed, and sometimes clod-crushers have to be yHUL TIPLB f>LOUCH Cl op Crusher used on it. A seeding-machine is also employed. This scatters the seed-grain forty feet, and sows one hundred acres a day. If these modern farm-tools had not been in- vented, the millions on millions of human beings living on the globe could not be fed ; for the ground could not be prepared for sowing the seed of the immense grain harvests gathered every year. Wheaten bread was once a luxury of kings THE OLDEST OCCUPATION. and nobles. Now it is part of the every-day food of the workingman. Every bushel of grain raised over last year's cereal harvest must benefit some needy family. The more wheat is produced here, the cheaper will flour be. The steam-plow may therefore be said to be one of the noblest tools ever made, as it enables us to till land so easily that wheat enough can be raised to bring bread within the reach of all — even the poorest. When a small plot of ground, like a garden, is to be planted, the soil is turned over with a spade. In Europe the spade is also often used in field work, digging potatoes, turnips, carrots, 1 8 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. and other roots. Ditches are dug, trees set, post-holes made, and trenches cut, with the help of the same useful implement. Can you men- tion any other kind of work usually done with a spade ? Lesson III. Uncle Sam's Seed Barn. The wise plan of saving the finest grains, roots, and seeds, in order to plant them the next season, has brought about a wonderful gain in the quality of various products of the farm, the gar- den, and the orchard. The soil, too, is carefully chosen. Capable farmers do not think that any kind of land is suitable for every kind of seed. Men learned in a branch of science called Chemistry can tell of what elements different plants are composed. As the chemists can also determine whether or not those elements are in the land, the seeds of the crop to be raised can be placed in soil having all the materials needed for that crop's growth. Whatever elements are found in any vegetable — in the potato, for in- stance — must first have been in the air or the earth. Is not this statement true ? Yet, though we eat potatoes, we never even think of eating UNCLE SAM'S SEED BARN. *9 earth. Earth is mineral in nature, and there is only one mineral used as a food — salt. All our fruits arid food-plants once grew wild, and were then of but little value in supporting life. However, by careful selection, persisted in year after year, the quality has been so much improved that there is now very little likeness between the food-plants of to-day and the wild stocks from which they sprang. Many persons do not know that the United States Government spends every year one hundred thousand dollars in buying seeds of the best quality for the purpose of giving them away. The 20 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. Department of Agriculture at Washington has a large brick building, in which thousands of bags of seed may be seen piled up in long rows during the winter season. In spring most of the seed is sent by mail to all parts of the country. Let us imagine that we are visiting the building on some April day. We will go into the mailing- room. How large it is ! How busy every one seems to be ! Hundreds of young women rapidly putting up small parcels, others pasting and ad- dressing labels, men dragging heavy sacks hither and thither — these are some of the sights that strike us on entering. What do those tin pans in the window-ledge contain ? Strong wires run in pairs across each pan, which is half full of water. From every pair of wires a fold of muslin hangs, two inches of it at least being in the water. In each fold seeds are laid from one side of the pan to the other. The water soaks the seeds, and causes them to sprout, if they are good. This is the method by which the seeds are tested. The Department does not wish to send out bad ones, so from each lot of seed bought some seeds are taken and tried. Seeds not proving satis- factory are sent to the official gardener to be tested in earth. The young women, seated at little tables, are UNCLE SAM'S SEED BARN. 21 measuring out seed from sacks into brown paper envelopes. Some of these workers use quart cups, others pints, others half-pints, and so on downward, the smallest measures being mere thimbles with long handles. The envelopes, too, differ in size. A pint of beans needs an envelope larger than one intended to hold only a thimble- full of the tiny seeds of the carrot, does it not ? In another room, not so large as the first one, we see more young women engaged in putting up and mailing packets of flower-seeds. Here, too, potatoes are cut up and packed neatly in little wooden boxes — twenty-five "eyes" in each box. The usual way to procure Government seeds is to apply for some to the member of Congress in whose district the applicant lives. The Depart- ment of Agriculture puts about five thousand envelopes, full of seeds, at the disposal of each Congressman. These envelopes are mailed under instructions from him. Two-thirds of the one hundred thousand dollars' worth of seeds go in this manner generally. The remaining one-third is distributed as the Department sees fit. 22 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. Lesson IV. An American Invention. In old times men used to reap their fields of grain with sickles, or reaping-hooks. Once in a while the sickle is found useful even nowadays. New inventions seldom render the things they dis- place entirely worthless. We have electric lights now, but candles are still manufactured. Looking at the picture of the sickle, you notice that it has a short handle and a narrow curved blade. The reaper, holding the hook in his right hand, grasps with his left as many stalks of the standing grain as he can hold, bends them back from him to prevent his sickle from slipping, and cuts them off close to the ground. Another worker binds the loose grain into sheaves, and sets them up in shocks, or stooks. Such reaping was felt to be too slow a process when farmers began to grow more wheat. It was observed that the mower could do more labor in a day than the reaper, because the scythe, the cutting tool used by the mower, enabled him to work with both hands. Observation here led to the invention of the grain "cradle" — an implement somewhat like the scythe, but AN AMERICAN INVENTION. 23 having in addition four light wooden fingers at- tached to the handle. The cut grain, falling on the framework made by these fingers, can be dropped by the reaper where he wishes. The grain-cradle is still used on small farms in the eastern part of the United States. The mind of man has always been at work seeking to find new methods of lightening labor. We cannot tell when the first machine to har- vest grain was made. The greatest wheat-grow- ing country of the ancient world was Egypt ; and 24 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. there, three or four thousand years ago, no doubt, the first grain harvester was tried. It is more than nineteen hundred years since a famous Ro- man writer, Pliny the Elder, described a curious reaper used by the people who then lived in that part of Europe now called France. It looked somewhat like a very large comb, and was used to tear off the heads of the grain. The modern reaper may be said to date its origin from a machine designed by an English- man in 1786. It was, however, of no real service, and was soon laid aside. To the Ameri- can, McCormick, belongs the honor of having made the first practical machine for reaping. The principle on which it works, thought out in 1 83 1, is the one on which every reaper now in use is constructed. Of course many improvements have been added. The latest reaping-machine not only cuts the grain, but also rakes it into bundles of uniform size, ties them with twine, and drops them on the ground. Reapers are operated by horse-power, but a steam reaping-machine has lately been tried, and promises to be of great value on the immense prairie farms of the Northwest. Grass-cutting machines, called mowers, are also made. Ameri- can reapers and mowers are sent to all parts of the world. In the five years between 1880 and THE OX-TASK IN BIBLE TIMES. 25 1886, this country manufactured seven hundred thousand mowing and reaping machines — an enormous number. It required the labor of thou- sands of men to make those machines, and the wages paid supported thousands of persons in comfort. The reapers were the means not only of thus furnishing bread to the workmen building them but also of making that bread cheaper by lessening the cost of harvesting the grain. Lesson V. An Ox-Task in Bible Times. The process of clearing the grain from husks and chaff is called threshing or thrashing. In the days of our grandfathers the cut grain was spread out on a floor, prepared for threshing purposes, and a flail was used to beat the husks from the kernels. The flail was made of two hard-wood sticks of different lengths, joined by a hinge of leather. The thresher grasped the end of the longer stick, swung the flail aloft, and brought it down on the grain. It took much time to learn to thresh skilfully with a flail, and a beginner, using it, was more likely at first to beat his own head than the heads of wheat. With practice, however, 26 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. the work grew easier, and the thresher learned to knock the husk off the kernels without breaking them. The Old Testament tells us not to muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn. In Palestine and countries near it people still thresh their grain by having oxen walk on it ; for in -old Asiatic lands progress is unknown. The ancient ways of working are considered good enough there, and changes are not looked on with favor. By so slow a method of threshing we could never procure wheat enough to supply the demand in our own country, nor could we furnish Europe with the millions of bushels of grain we send thither every year. The flail, too, is out of date THE OX-TASK IN BIBLE TIMES. 2J now, and threshing is done by steam-power. A new threshing-machine binds the straw into bundles, and stacks them, in addition to separat- ing the grain from the chaff and the husks. The straw is used as litter for horses and cattle. You know that straw of a certain quality is employed for making hats and bonnets, and that a cheaper grade is manufactured into paper. To the farmer the straw as well as the grain is therefore a source of profit. The old way of cleaning the grain from the husks — called winnowing it — was to throw it by shovelfuls from one end of the barn towards the other. The kernels went much farther than the husks, because these are very light. On the large wheat-farms of the West the wheat is threshed and cleaned in the field by steam. In the thresh- ing-machines worked by horse-power, a circular fan, in shape somewhat like a steamer's paddle-wheel, blows the husks away from the grain. By means of these labor-saving machines the cost of wheat is much reduced. If all the wheat grown in the United States this year had been cut by reaping-hooks, threshed by flails, and win- nowed in the old style, none but the very rich could afford to eat white bread. Every machine, then, that saves time and labor, is a direct benefit to the poor. 28 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. Lesson VI. Grasses. Certain plants with stringy roots, and hollow jointed stalks, are classed into one family by botanists, and are known as the Grasses. They are the most important of all vegetal products. You expect to learn that common grass is a member of this family ; but perhaps it will sur- prise you to be told that bamboo and sugar-cane are also grasses. It is more interesting, however, to know that wheat, corn, rye, oats, barley, millet, and rice be- long to this same group. People have always used the seeds of these plants for food. They grow in all parts of the globe where man lives. Barley is the hardiest of the grasses, and is found even in the frigid zones. Rice requires a tropical climate. The kernels are oval in shape, except the millet kernels, which are round, like small shot. The outside layer of each kernel, or seed, is composed chiefly of woody fibre. This is worthless for food. The next layer is brownish in color, and the next white. Both these layers are valuable. In grinding wheat it is usual to separate the white portion of the kernel from the brown. To use GRASSES. 29 only the former for bread-making is a common mistake. The brown part contains food for the brain and muscles, while the white layer is mainly starch, and can do but little more for the body than to furnish heat to it. Barley is a native of Central Asia. The ancient Egyptians believed it was the first of the grasses to be used as a food. The old Romans fed it to their horses. Only two centuries ago it was the common food-grain of England. Now that rail- roads and steamers enable us to exchange quickly the products of one country for those of another, wheat from the United States can be sold in England at low rates. Barley is prepared for table use by pearling the grains — that is, by peel- ing off the outer woody layer. It is not known where ma'h first discovered oats growing wild. Oatmeal porridge is mentioned by an English writer who lived in the sixteenth century. We have reasons for believing that oatmeal was used to some extent as a food three hundred years before that period. Oats will flourish in almost as cold a climate as barley. We should remember that oatmeal, while not so easily digested as wheat flour, contains more of the materials of which muscle is composed. Rye will grow as far north as oats, and will thrive in a soil too poor for any other grain. The 30 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. flour made from rye is. not so white as wheat flour, but is much richer in muscle-forming sub- stances. Rye bread is in every-day use in Ger- many and Russia. Sometimes a fungus grows on the grains, giving them the shape of spurs. This fungus is called ergot, and is a poison. Of course it would be dangerous to eat bread made from flour with which such spurred grains had been ground up. Four hundred million people live mainly on rice. It forms the principal part of the daily food of one-third of the human race. No other one of the grasses is so largely used. The fields in which it is grown are covered with water. Rice is mostly starch, contains but little nourish- ment for the brain or the muscles, and the nations living on this cereal are behind Europeans and Americans in almost everything useful. Lesson VII. , The Miller's Methods. Wheat grows in all temperate climates. Unlike rye or barley, it needs a rich soil. Since the dis- covery of America by Columbus the use of wheat has been steadily on the increase. The cause THE MILLER'S METHODS. 3* seems to be the fact that bread made from it is lighter, and, therefore, more digestible, than that baked from any other grain. Wheat is the only one of the grasses having in it a large share of a tough, elastic substance, called gluten. It is the gluten that, with the aid of heat and yeast, enables a lump of moistened dough to expand to a loaf of bread three times as large. Such bread can be readily digested, and, as it has no decided flavor, we do not become tired of it. The quality of flour depends on the kind of 32 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. wheat, the curing of the wheat, and the mode of grinding. There are only two kinds of wheat, the hard wheat and the soft, but each kind has several grades. American wheat is mostly soft ; the wheat raised on the plains of Hungary is an example of the hard variety. The utmost care is taken to cure, or dry, the grain properly. If moldy, it is unfit for flour. In old times the grain was brayed into meal in a stone bowl. Even to-day the Indians of Mexico may be seen grinding their corn in the same primitive manner. The next process in advance in flour-making was to place one grindstone on another, pour the grain in between them, through an opening in the top stone, and set the latter whirling round and round with great speed by means of wind-power. Later on, water-power was employed. A stream was led to fall into the buckets of a huge wheel, or was allowed to strike the wheel underneath. By either method the wheel was turned with great force. Oftentimes, however, the wind failed ; then the mill stood idle, and of course it was compelled to stand idle also when the stream dried up or was frozen. The largest mills now grind by steam. There are two systems of grinding — high-milling and low-milling. Low-milling crushes the grain be- TOM'S LETTER. 33 tween heavy stones, grooved to catch the kernels. Heating the flour and grinding part of the husk with it are the chief defects of this plan. High-milling is a succession of crackings and squeezings. The kernels first pass between steel rolls which crack them slightly, the next set of rolls squeeze the cracked kernels more, and so on. By this mode the husk is not ground up with the flour, but only flattened, thus allowing the dry part of the kernel inside the husk to fall out. The flour is not heated, and is whiter than if it had been low-milled, because the bran is removed without grinding it. But only hard wheat is suit- able for high-milling. Lesson VIII. Tom's Letter. Minneapolis, December 19, 1890. Dear Fred, — This city seems to be full of millers. More wheat is ground into flour here every day than in any other place in the world. Uncle George and I visited one of the big mills last week. It is a huge building nine stories high. There were dozens of workmen on each floor, and all were as busy as bees. The whirr of the machinery almost deafened 34 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. me, but it did not trouble the millers at all — at least I think it did not, for they seemed to under- stand the orders given by the foreman. A railroad track runs up to one side of the mill, and the grain is poured directly from box- cars into the mill by means of the elevator, and then is sent up from the basement to the top story by steam-power. The first process is cleaning the wheat. Straws, sand, chaff, bits of iron and of wood, are thrown out by the separators, as the cleaning-machines are called. Grass-seeds, beans, chess, smut — in fact, everything not wheat-kernels is sifted out. The grains are passed between brush-rollers, and dust and fuzz are thereby removed, leaving the kernels perfectly clean. The dust is blown out of the separator by a current of air rushing up the machine while the wheat is coming down. The next step is to crack the kernels length- wise, then they are squeezed again, and the oper- ation is repeated a third time. This last time the husk is freed from the good part of the grain. One of the owners of the mill said this way of turning wheat into flour is called high-grinding. The grain is now shaken in coarse sieves, and the bran is separated from the wheat meal. This meal is called middlings. I tasted a little of it, TOMS LETTER. 35 and it was quite sweet. Though the bran can- not be used for making bread, it is good food for cattle, and is run into cars, and sold to farmers who fatten live-stock for the Eastern meat-markets. The middlings are ground again, and then sifted five times — so the foreman said. This sifting is termed " bolting," and is done by means of large round sieves, made of silk, revolving very fast on a steel bar. The last bolting gives flour. On the first floor we saw a row of great iron tubes on each side of the mill. The flour came down through these, and was packed, by machin- ery, in barrels or bags. One man tended each machine. When a barrel or a bag was filled, the workman put it on a scale to find out whether he had let in the correct weight of flour. Every barrel must contain one hundred and ninety-six pounds of flour. A bag of flour is equal to one- eighth of a barrel. Everything possible seems to be done in the mills to lighten the work of the men and to im- prove the quality of the flour. The rich mill- owners are always ready to buy any patented invention that will help them to make flour more • cheaply or to make it better in grade. In a Mas- sachusetts engineering school, only last year, a young man patented an electric machine for col- 36 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. lecting the flour dust ; and yet his patent is now used in several mills here. The wheat-cleaning machines had pipes attached to draw away the dust and to carry it out- doors. Uncle George says that very fine dust of any substance will, if mixed with air, explode with great violence on bringing a light into contact with such dust-laden air. A dust explosion in a mill would cause great loss of life. I hope every- one at home is well. Good-by for the present. Your loving brother, Tom. Lesson IX. Golden Ears. Corn, the largest and handsomest of the grasses, is a native of the American Continent. Soon after its discovery here it was introduced into Europe. In England it is called maize. When grown in a warm rich soil, corn attains a height of five or six feet, while its broad leaves springing from its straight thick stem, its elegant * spike of flowers at the top, its silken tufts rising from the end of the cob, present a beauty of form rarely surpassed even by tropical plants. It grows wild in the hotter parts of the Western GOLDEN EARS. 37 Continent, but is cultivated in every quarter of the globe. It does not flourish, however, in cold or moist climates. Numerous preparations of the grain are in use. The pearled kernels form samp ; kernels heated so as to burst them are termed pop-corn, but these are not from the same variety of grain as the former. Broken corn is called hominy ; a fine flour is known as corn-starch. Indian meal does not possess gluten enough to make good bread ; wheat flour must be added. It is remarkable that there is no domestic bird or animal that does not prefer corn to 38 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. any other grain. Poultry of all kinds fatten on it ; oxen, horses, sheep, and cows eat it with great relish. In the United States farmers sometimes sow it broadcast, and cut it for fodder, like ordi- nary grass. Corn is an excellent food, and is easily digested. It is better than rice, but is not so good as wheat, because the latter grain contains more nutriment for the nerves and muscles. Corn has more oil in it than barley, wheat, or rice. The climate of West- ern Europe is too damp for the cultivation of corn as a field crop ; and the grain was not con- sumed to any great extent in the British Islands till the year of the potato failure, 1846. Since then about one million four hundred thousand bushels of corn are imported annually into England and Ireland, chiefly from the United States. In Italy Indian meal has long been a favorite article of diet with the poorer classes. The European country producing, in proportion to its area, the most corn is Greece. Large quantities of the grain are raised in Turkey also. Our own country exports every year about one hundred million bushels of this valuable cereal. But it is surprising to learn that we use at home twenty times that enormous amount, mostly in the shape of food for cattle and hogs. Farmers have learned that there is more profit for them THE STAFF OF LIFE. 39 in keeping live-stock to which the corn can be fed, than in sending it to market. The railroads charge as much for one hundred pounds of corn, carried as freight, as for one hundred pounds of pork, and the pork will sell for much more money than the corn. For the past eighty years the acreage of our corn crop has been constantly increasing, till now corn is the most important grain-product of the United States. It brings money not only to the farmers who raise it but also to the railroads that transport it from farms to markets, to the steamers which carry it abroad, and to everybody that buys or sells it. Lesson X. The Staff of Life. Plowing, harrowing, reaping, threshing, win- nowing, grinding — all these different kinds of labor might be performed with one object in view, the production of flour that could be made into nutritious bread. To make bread, water, salt, and flour are mixed together into dough, a little yeast being added. In ancient times yeast was unknown. Bread- makers then used leaven. It is occasionally used 40 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. even nowadays by the uneducated class of people in some foreign countries. Leaven consists of flour and water, mixed and kept till signs of fermenta- tion appear. The dough becomes spongy, bubbles of carbonic acid gas having formed in it. It is this gas that causes the fizz and foam of soda-water. The dough is now leaven, and can excite a like ferment in other dough within a few hours. To make the leaven itself will usually require a fort- night. Yeast is the thick froth that rises to the top of malt liquor. This froth, after being skimmed off, is partly dried ; then it is pressed, washed, and cut up into little blocks. These blocks, covered with tinfoil, are sold under the name of compressed yeast. The action of yeast on batter, or dough, is very curious. First the starch of the flour is changed into a sort of sugar, called glucose ; then this sugar dissolves into alcohol and carbonic acid gas, and the gas, trying to get out of the dough, swells it, or makes it rise, as we often say. The alcohol and gas escape during the baking of the dough, but the gas leaves holes in the bread, thus render- ing it lighter and more digestible. It is easy to produce bread without either yeast or leaven. Mix with the batter a little saleratus and a small quantity of the acid known as spirits THE STAFF OF LIFE. 41 of salt. The heat of the oven will swell this dough until it is quite light, baking it at the same time. There is another process of making bread with- i^flUij^ ^gjr p tea c KttPcamm.. j w.^ WW V / \ _ — 33 ^TinEfflTBiaWttj out yeast or leaven or salt. It was thought out by an English physician, Dr. Dauglish, to satisfy the demands of great cities for some quick and wholesome way of turning flour into bread. The needed carbonic acid gas is prepared before- hand in a separate vessel. This gas is then forced 42 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. into water, which finally becomes highly charged with it, and the flour is mixed with this water in a strong iron mixer. At the proper time a valve opens, having fixed before it a long trumpet- shaped nozzle resting on a large marble slab. The peculiar shape of the nozzle allows the sponge to distend gradually instead of suddenly. It issues in a long roll, and is cut off into the requisite lengths by a workman, whose accuracy in slicing off the right amount of dough each time seems marvellous. By Dr. Dauglish's method of bread-making, sometimes called the aerated pro- cess, flour can be changed into bread in an hour and a half, nearly all the work involved being done by machinery. Lesson XI. More about Bread. The new processes of bread-making promise to change entirely the baking methods at present in general use. Machinery will supersede hand-work. The bread-bakery of the future will be an immense factory, wherein hundreds of persons will find em- ployment. The gain will be a great saving in the cost of a very important article of food — our daily bread. MORE ABOUT BREAD. 43 No manual labor can rival amixing-and-kneading machine in obtaining exact and certain results in its line of work. On page 45 you can see a pic- ture of this machine. From a spout over it, flour is pouring in, coming from the story above. If you should look into the tank, which the bakers call the holder, you would see several paddles revolving in the dough. At one moment they move toward one another, compressing the dough ; the next, with reversed motion, they tear it asunder. About a quarter of an hour is required for mixing ; then the holder is tilted, the dough falls on a large table, and is ready to be divided into loaves. Graham bread, such as is usually sold in baker- shops, is merely bread made from white flour sprinkled with middlings. Now, this is not the right way to produce the best brown bread. Almost any grocery store can to-day supply whole-wheat flour. This has been specially pre- pared by grinding the middlings fine and adding them to the flour. By this plan all the valuable elements of the wheat are preserved in due pro- portion. It should be remembered, however, that bread with much bran in it is of little use. The bran irritates the delicate lining of the stomach so greatly that complete digestion of the rest of the bread cannot take place. 44 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. White bread can be more thoroughly digested than brown bread ; but the latter, if properly made, is more capable of satisfying the wants of the body. Persons using bread made from refined flour, should also eat at every meal some food of animal origin, as meat, eggs, or cheese. Stale bread is more digestible than fresh bread. No loaf less than twenty-four hours old should ever be placed on the table. French bread owes its superior lightness to the hot milk used to make the flour into batter. Vienna rolls are made from a special grade of flour, costing twice as much as common flour. Boiled potatoes are often mixed with dough to cause it to rise quickly. As they are largely starch, they effect the purpose intended, because cooked starch is changed into sugar more rapidly than raw starch. In times of scarcity of wheat flour, various vegetal products have been mixed with it to eke out the scanty supply. During the siege of Paris by the Germans, an odd sort of bread was made of a little flour, mixed with some oatmeal, and with straw cut up very fine. In Norway and Sweden, beech sawdust is sometimes boiled, baked, and mingled with wheat meal, to form material for bread. A MACHINE BAKER. 45 Lesson XII. A Machine Baker. A baker's oven is a chamber, built commonly of fire-brick, having an arched roof and a flat floor of tile or stone. The oven is generally underground. Formerly it was heated by wood burned within it. While the wood was ablaze, 46 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. the oven doors were kept closed, a small aperture being left to supply air. When the fuel had smoldered into ashes, the floor was hastily swept clear, and the bread was put in. A different method of heating is employed to-day. While some clever men were trying to better the old hap-hazard ways of making bread, others were improving the oven. Coal was sub- stituted for wood, a separate furnace being con- structed adjoining the oven, with a flue opening into it. A funnel over the mouth of the flue permitted the smoke to escape. Even this mode of heating was found to be too slow, and now in all the large bakeries steam is the baking power. Water cannot be brought to a higher temperature than two hundred and twelve degrees, the boiling point. Heated beyond this point, water is converted into steam. But there is hardly a limit to the degree of heat to which steam can be raised. You may understand how valuable is this property of steam when you learn that the temperature of a good-sized oven should be five hundred degrees, if bread is to be well baked in it. In a steam-heated oven, the ceiling is formed of iron pipes, which are set close, side by side. Beneath the oven floor, similar pipes are laid. All these pipes project into a furnace at the back. A MACHINE BAKER. 47 As they can bear a strain of two tons to the square inch, there is but little danger of ex- plosion. If we looked into one of the tubes, we should see that the bore is small, being in fact less than half the diameter. Water is confined in the tubes at their furnace ends, and, fire being applied, steam quickly fills the pipes and heats the oven to the requisite degree. The temperature, shown on an index, is regulated by flues, and can be varied at will. There is no need of opening the door to note the progress of the baking, for above the door are two glass eyelets. One has an electric light before it, to illumine the oven ; through the other the workman can watch the baking. No blaze comes into the oven ; smoke and smut are absent ; the ashes of wood and the sulphurous vapors of coal are unknown ; the bread comes out sweet and pure, and the bakers are not exhausted by intense heat. 48 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. Lesson XIII. Crackers. It was the increasing demand for crackers that forced men to think out some method of baking which would be quicker than the old way. The steam oven, composed of double cases of iron, the intervening space being filled with fire-proof cement, is certainly a wonderful advance over the brick-walled little room used for baking in the past. But the articles baked have been improved even more than the means of baking them. No boy or girl would prefer the pilot bread of our grand- fathers, the only cracker they knew, to the lemon snaps obtainable in any grocery store to-day. Crackers differ from bread in two particulars : they are made without the use of either yeast or any other raising material, and they are baked till they contain scarcely any water. The soft- ness of fresh bread is due to the moisture in it. In the British Islands a cracker is called a " bis- cuit," a word meaning twice cooked. It is, there- fore, not applicable to any cracker made nowadays. Rusks, indeed, have to go into the oven twice ; first, they are lightly baked as a kind of bread ; CRA CKERS. 49 then they are cut into slices, and again put into a hot oven in order to brown both sides. Afterwards they are dried by a lower heat continued for some hours. The dough of crackers is so stiff that it cannot be kneaded by hand. It was customary to trample it with the feet years ago. Later on, the dough, spread on a heavy table, was chopped by a long wooden bar, hinged at one end, the other end being grasped by the workman. Finally, the mightiest of all workers, Steam, was invited into the service of the cracker-bakers ; and now heavy iron arms and rollers mix and knead the stiff dough more readily than any of us can mold clay. Most crackers consist of flour and water with slight additions of butter, sugar, and flavoring substances. Fruit extracts, ginger, lemon and orange peel, spices, and other flavorers, are used in making fancy crackers and cakes. It is worth remembering that crackers are more nutritious 50 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. than bread. They are most digestible when not very tough, and when they have been slightly browned by baking. Sometimes soldiers of the great countries of Europe are ordered away to distant colonies. To supply crackers to such troops while they are in savage lands, a small portable oven has been invented. It looks like a railroad locomotive, and is constructed on the principle of the steam oven. One of these field ovens can bake the daily rations of bread or hard-tack for one thousand soldiers, at the trifling cost of sixty-five cents ! The men who have devised these skilful methods of making bread wholesome and cheap are counted among the greatest benefactors of the human race. We, who will soon be men, should strive to gain at school the knowledge which will enable us also to be of some service to the world, should we not ? Lesson XIV. Cakes. It would be hard to find a boy or a girl that has not tasted the more costly products of the modern cracker-factory. You know some of their names — ginger-snaps, macaroons, vanilla creams, key- CAKES. 51 stones, orange cakes, cream cakes ; and there are dozens of other toothsome bake-stuffs relished by both old and young. These nice articles were quite unknown to our fathers and mothers when they were school-children. They had only doughy gin- ger-bread or caraway- seed cakes. Young people sel- dom stop to reflect that luxuries at the command of the la- borer now were once beyond the reach of the wealthy. You can get an orange for five cents ; your grandfather, when he was a schoolboy, could not buy one for twenty times that small sum. How has this for- tunate change been' brought about ? By study, thought, experiment ; by applying science to the useful arts. Before raisins could have been for- warded to us swiftly and safely from Smyrna, or sugar could have been brought here cheaply from 52 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. Havana, or spices from Batavia, skilful engineers must have devised those powerful steam-engines which are able to drive a great steamer, with its thousands of tons of freight, against wind and waves. Millions of bushels of delicious tropical fruits would run to waste in their own lands, if it were not possible to transport rapidly the pro- ducts of one country to the markets of another. It is brain-work, then, not hand-work, that has lowered the prices of all the good things we eat. Visit a large cracker-factory, and you will see that nearly all the labor is done by metal and wood. Human hands rarely touch the factory's produc- tions until they are ready to be packed up and sent away to different parts of the globe. Ma- chinery, as complex as the works of a watch, con- verts flour, eggs, milk, butter, sugar, and spices into the dainties whose names we read at the beginning of this lesson. Notice the machines for mixing ; for delivering the dough through tubes into drums, in which it is kneaded ; for rolling it out into sheets of any desired thinness ; for punching out bake-stuffs of various sizes ; for gathering up the scraps and passing them into an iron box. So skilfully does the ma- chinery do its work that the visitor cannot help thinking it is alive ! Every known leaf, seed, fruit, and flower, whose THREE KINGDOMS OE EOOD. 53 flavor pleases the palate, is pressed into the service of the factory ; for the making of cake has been found to be as profitable as the baking of crackers. The masterpiece of the fancy baker's art is the royal bride-cake. Its picture, on page 51, tells us that to make such a cake, time, care, and patience are just as essential as the rich materials of which it is composed. Lesson XV. Three Kingdoms of Food. It is not the least remarkable point of distinction between man and the lower animals, that, while these limit themselves to definite sorts of proven- der, he eats of almost every nutrient. He feeds on the beasts of the field, the fowls of the air, the fishes in the waters, and the fruits of the earth. If viands satisfactory to a brute creature, should be too tough or too coarse for the refined palate of man, he will so change them by cooking that they will become digestible. It is his mind that gives man control over the products of the earth to the extent of transmuting apparently useless things into nourishment for his body. The power of his intellect has proved too 54 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. strong for nature. By the exercise of his reason, man has discovered the strange truth that all kinds of food consist of the same elements. The differences between the various nutritive sub- stances result from the peculiar alterations caused in minerals, by plant life and in plants by animal life. It is owing to man's researches and discoveries, rather than to any special power of digestion, that he can convert some parts 'of almost every animal and every vegetable into victuals more or less nourishing. The three kingdoms of nature are drawn on to supply us with the necessaries of life. Our great storehouses of food are the animal and the vege- table kingdom — the mineral is resorted to for water and salt only. But at any minute of our lives we may be impressively reminded that air is even more necessary than food. The round of operations by which we obtain vegetal food from the earth is called Agriculture. The term Horticulture is sometimes applied to garden work, especially to fruit or flower garden- ing. The main object of either garden or field cultivation is to raise on a given space the great- est quantity of certain vegetal products, due regard being paid to quality. Most of the vegetables shown in the picture THREE KINGDOMS OF FOOD. 55 on page 57 contain a much larger proportion of water than the grains we have read about. Chem- ists can prove to us that a pound of wheat has in it two ounces of water — that a pound of turnips is fifteen-sixteenths water. It will be seen, there- fore, that there is very little nourishment in tur- nips. They are fed to cattle mostly. Garden products are either plants from warmer climates, or native plants improved by careful tillage bestowed on them for centuries. If this care were not constantly exercised, the plants would soon change back to their wild state, and thus become useless to mankind. The plow is not used in gardens, the spade being preferred for loosening and upturning their soils. It must not be supposed, however, that the employment of hand-labor in gardening is occasioned solely by the size of the area of land cultivated. The true reason for using the spade instead of the plow is the inability of the latter tool to loosen the soil deeply enough to make it fit to raise vegetables profitably. Gardening, like every other business, is carried on for the money made in it. 56 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. Lesson XVI. Pod Seeds. We learned that in those varieties of the grasses bearing the seeds called grains each kernel is protected by a light husk only. There is another well-known class of plants, whose seeds are also edible but are enclosed in pods. Such plants are termed leguminous. Peas and beans are examples. The Pea is a climbing, annual plant. The seed, green, is a favorite early vegetable in the United States ; the ripened seed, dry, is more used in Europe. Split peas are produced by grinding the seeds lightly between plates of iron, in mills built for the purpose. This operation frees the seed- germ from its envelope, and also separates each seed into two portions. The garden pea came originally from the borders of the Black Sea. It has long been grown in Western Europe, and was brought to America by the early settlers. Green peas contain a consider- able quantity of sugar, and are more easily digested than peas fully ripened. Ripe peas require, even when ground into meal, long though slow boiling, to render them fit for POD SEEDS. 57 use. But when they are properly cooked, they form excellent food. Pea soup is very nutri- tious, if an equal weight of meat be added to the weight of peas used. Still, as hot water cannot extract all the valuable properties of meat, no soup can be regarded as a complete substitute for the more solid foods, — bread, cheese, potatoes, meat. The Bean is a native of India. This plant is grown extensively in Italy and France. The broad, 58 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. or Windsor, bean is used unripe as a vegetable. It is an annual, but, unlike the other beans, is not a climbing plant. Its black and white flowers are delightfully fragrant. Beans are wholesome food, contain a great deal of flesh-forming matter, and consequently should be eaten with some starchy nutrient, like rice, or with a fat food, like pork. The New England dish of baked beans and pork is therefore well calculated to satisfy most bodily needs, though persons indulging in it must be engaged in hard out-door labor to digest it easily. In France beans are in general use ; in Mexico and Central America they constitute the principal sustenance of the poorer classes. Our own working people do not fully appreciate the value of peas and beans as articles of diet. The proportion of muscle-forming material is far higher in the legu- mens than in the cereals. One pound of the best wheat-flour cannot produce more than i 2 /z ounces of the dry substance of muscle or flesh ; while one pound of beans will furnish 3^ ounces of the same dry muscle-forming substance. AN EATABLE POISON ROOT. 59 Lesson XVII. An Eatable Poison Root. The Potato seems to hold a middle place be- tween the cereals and those plants whose leaves are consumed as food. Potatoes, though richer in nutritive material than most of the other tubers, contain, nevertheless, seventy-five per cent of water — that is, there are twelve ounces of water in every pound of potatoes. It is surprising to learn that the potato belongs to an order of plants all of which are more or less poisonous. The term order, as here used, means a class of plants closely related to one another in the structure of their flowers and fruit, and having more points of resemblance than of difference. The order including the potato takes its name from one of its best-known members, — the deadly nightshade. The poison is generally found in the fruit or in the leaves, the roots usually being harmless, if boiled. Yet so danger- ous are the juices of plants of the Nightshade order, that even the water in which potatoes have been cooked is poisonous to a certain degree. Europe knew nothing about the potato until the Spanish conquest of South America, the plant 60 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. being a native of Chili and Peru. It grows wild in those countries now. It was brought to Ireland by Sir John Hawkins, in 1565 ; to England by Sir Francis Drake in 1585, and by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1586. Not, however, till the close of the last century, did it become a popular article of food. Potatoes thrive best in a light dry soil. Seed is not used to raise a new crop, but small pieces of the tubers are planted, each piece having a bud, or eye, in it. The potato requires careful tillage during its growth ; for the crop must be kept free from weeds, and the weak stems must be sup- ported by having the earth drawn up around them when the plants are young. Potato murrain is the name given to a singular disease, known in England and Ireland since 1845. It attacks the foliage of the plants, destroying it, and causing rapid decay of the tubers. The mur- rain prevails in damp warm summers, if the rain- fall is heavy. Such weather is favorable to the growth of the fungus or mildew which is the immediate cause of the disease. The remedies seem to be good drainage and the removal of decaying matter from the soil. Starch is obtained in large quantities from potatoes, by crushing them, and washing the pulp repeatedly in cold water, till all the starch is extracted. The water is then evaporated, leaving SOME VEGETABLES. 6 1 a layer of pure starch. This starch by roasting becomes dextrin, often called British gum, an article useful in various manufacturing operations. Boiled with weak sulphuric acid, potato starch is changed into glucose, or grape sugar, the material of which cheap candies are made. Glucose, by fermentation, yields alcohol. Potatoes, consisting mainly of starch and water, cannot be considered a complete food. They should be used in addition to lean meat or some other nitrogenous article of diet. Lesson XVIII. Some Vegetables. The Umbellifer order includes many poisonous plants, and also some edible ones, as carrots, parsnips, and celery. This apparent contradiction is easily explained. The poison is found only in the leaves and stems. It is developed in them by the action of sunlight. Cooking makes the baneful juice in some of the plants harmless ; their nutritive matter is then, of course, eatable. The carrot has been cultivated in England for four centuries. The parsnip has been a garden vegetable there since the Roman invasion, which took place nearly two thousand years ago. Carrots 62 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. contain no starch, unlike parsnips. The former roots though more watery than the latter, are more nourishing, are liked better, and are much more extensively grown. Celery in its wild state is poisonous, but, as cul- tivated in this country, the stems are kept from the air and light ; hence the hurtful juices are not developed, and the plant becomes a desirable addition to the salad list. All raw vegetables, however, are not readily digested. It is only when celery is boiled in soup that we obtain the most benefit from the plant. Water composes nearly seven-eighths of it. The peculiar flavor and odor of celery are due to an essential oil. Certain plants that are bulbs, with roots, are classed in the Lily order. Several of these plants are edible, such as the onion, leek, garlic, and shallot. They owe their pungent flavor to a white volatile oil, containing a good deal of sulphur. The onion is a native of Turkey in Asia, and has been cultivated for many centuries. There are numerous varieties of the plant. The largest bulbs are the mildest in flavor. Spanish onions are used in South-eastern Europe as articles of every-day diet. In Africa, in the fertile countries south of the Sahara, onion gardens several square miles in area are quite common. Scorched onions are employed for coloring soups. A pound of the SOME VEGETABLES. 63 ordinary onions sold in our markets, would not produce a quarter of an ounce of muscle. The flavor of garlic is so powerful that this bulb can be used only in small quantities. It is a native of Southern Europe, where it is in common use. Its bulb consists of ten or twelve parts, termed "cloves." In this country it is met with only in sauces. The shallot is a relative of the onion. It is of milder flavor than the latter, and is used in salads and pickles. The sweet potato is a native of tropical America, where it has long been extensively cultivated. It is also a field product of North Africa and of Southern Europe. The presence of sugar in this plant's tubers differences them from common potatoes. The quantities of water, starch, albu- men, and mineral matter will be about the same in a pound of one kind of potatoes as in a pound of the other. The sweet potato contains three per cent of sugar. There is no sugar at all in white potatoes. 64 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. Lesson XIX. How We Eat Potash. The term Cabbage is applied to more than one kind of plant ; but the firm-headed variety gener- ally known by that name was first cultivated in England about two hundred years ago. It is prop- agated by seed sown in spring, broadcast, in a prepared plot of ground, from which the young plants are taken and set in rows in the garden. The numerous plants botanically connected with the cabbage, together with the cabbage itself, do not differ much in nutritive value from turnips and carrots. Valuable mineral matters, as potash, salts, and phosphates, are, however, found in nota- ble quantities in most of the plants which we are to read about in this lesson. These minerals are needed to keep the body in perfect health. Asparagus stalks are sprouts from a peculiarly shaped root, and are cut when the root has attained the length of a few inches. Asparagus is grown from seed. The young plants are trans- planted to a bed of rich loam, where they are kept three or four years. The tender shoots are cut five or six inches long, bound in bunches, and thus brought to market. HOW WE EAT POTASH. 65 Tobacco, red pepper, and tomatoes — would not these vegetables, stewed together, make a strange dish ? Yet all three are closely related to one another, and to the potato, and are, of course, in- cluded in the same order of plants — the Night- shade. The tomato is an annual. It came probably from Mexico, and shows its tropical origin yet in demanding a good deal of heat to ripen its fruit. As it is more than seven-eighths water, its nutri- tive properties are very slight. Have you ever eaten a mushroom ? It belongs to the division of the vegetable kingdom compris- ing those plants which never flower, and which differ as much in appearance as in character. The common mushroom is not noxious, has an agreeable flavor, contains much fat, and is highly nitrogenous. Yet another mushroom, closely re- sembling it, is extremely poisonous, and has been the cause of many fatal mistakes. Take a mushroom in your hand, and examine it. How easy to pull it into pieces ! Yet it is the strongest plant in the world. In one night a mushroom will burst through a concrete sidewalk. If a boy were as strong, in proportion to his weight, he could lift several tons with his little finger ! Radishes may be cooked with advantage, but they are usually eaten raw. Their chief value is 66 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. their pungent flavor. Lettuce, a refreshing addi- tion to solid food, contains a valuable nutrient, a mineral salt called nitre. This would, by boiling the plant, be drawn out into the water ; hence lettuce is used uncooked. The cucumber is a fruit, like the melon, the squash, and the pumpkin, and, also like them, belongs to the Gourd order. Cucumber rind should never be eaten. Hot-house cucumbers are better than those raised in the open air. Lesson XX. Dairy Products. No less important than bread or vegetables are the dairy foods — milk, butter, and cheese. These enter, in one form or another, into some dish at every meal. Milk is a model food. It is the best food for infants. It furnishes all the nutrients needed to build up the tissues of the body. Sick people, especially fever patients, often have milk prescribed for them by their doctors. Years ago it was supposed that milk would be injurious in the very cases in which it is now regarded as better than medicine. Some kind of fat or oil is employed as a food by every race and tribe in the world. The peoples DAIRY PRODUCTS. 6 7 living within the Arctic Circle, the Eskimos, the Laplanders, the Samoyeds, and others, eat large quantities of animal fat. Young and old of these su-fct tribes prefer grease to sirloin steak. An Eskimo baby will eat greedily a lump of putrid whale blubber, and make wry faces at a piece of candy ! Cheese contains a great deal of nutritious ma- terial in a condensed form, but is not so easily digested as milk or butter. Some nations are much fonder of cheese than others. In England it is a common article of the every-day diet of farm hands and laborers. As cheese is almost 68 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. entirely a muscle-making food, they are quite sen- sible in selecting it for daily eating. If milk, butter, and cheese were, with bread, the only items on our bill of fare, we could keep up our health and strength. Meat is not neces- sary to sustain life. Many persons never eat any kind of animal food. Variety in diet is, however, best for all of us. No one nutrient, except milk, contains all the different elements needed to supply brain, muscle, nerves, and bones with proper nourishment. And we should soon grow tired of trying to live on milk exclusively. Milk is a white fluid which collects in certain glands, called the mammary or milk glands, of those animals that suckle their young. In ancient times milk from cows was very rare, while the milk of goats, donkeys, camels, and a few other animals, was common. Now, it is cow's milk that is plentiful. If milk is not readily digested, a little lime-water should be added to it. In mountainous countries, like Turkey in Asia, Greece, and Switzerland, where goats are numer- ous, their milk, which is richer than cow's milk, is an important article of diet. In those lands cows are scarce because they cannot climb mountains and live on the scanty fare that will satisfy goats. In Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, a common drink is sheep's milk. This milk, less agreeable THE COMPLETE FOOD. 69 in taste than cow's milk, is richer and more nourishing. The Tartars of Southern Russia are skilled in making a preparation of milk that our American doctors now prescribe as a medicinal food. It is made by allowing milk to ferment in order that carbonic acid gas may be formed from the sugar in the milk, the curds and whey separating at the same time. Such fermented milk is called kou- miss, and is both wholesome and nutritious. Some drug-stores sell imitations of it, made from sweet- ened cow's milk, and sealed up in bottles. The Arabs drink camel's milk ; the Laplanders, rein- deer's milk. Among all these peoples, and others in Europe, milk forms an important item of the daily food not only of children but also of adults. Lesson XXI. The Complete Food. The dairy farmer looks on his cows as machines to make milk, and he expects from each of them a certain quantity of this liquid for a certain amount of food. A cow of good breed, and well fed, will give twelve or fourteen quarts of rich milk daily. The famous Holstein cows, grazing on the luxu- 7o FOODS AND BEVERAGES. riant meadows of Holland, will each yield every- day, on the average, four gallons of milk. How much milk is used daily in the United States ? It is not possible to answer this question exactly, but we may judge of the importance of milk as a food by considering some figures drawn from statistics of the milk industry in New York City. At the small allowance of a half-pint of milk to each person every day, the two million persons residing or transacting business there THE COMPLETE FOOD. 71 consume 45,625,000 gallons a year. This ocean of milk, at the low price of twenty-five cents a gallon, would cost over $11,400,000. To supply the milk, how many cows are needed, each yielding ten quarts a day ? How many dol- lars do the cows represent, if each cow is worth fifty dollars ? Try to calculate the wages paid annually to the milkmen, the cost of horses and carts and harnesses, the rents of the numerous storehouses, and the value of the milk-cans, — no small sum, — and you will agree with your teacher that the milk trade is not the least of New York's industries. A good deal of thought has been given to the best means of transporting milk by railroad. The swaying and jolting of the cars must not be allowed to churn the milk on the journey. And the milk must be cooled before being sent away ; otherwise it would turn sour. When their milk train breaks down, or is blocked by a snowdrift, New Yorkers suddenly realize how great a busi- ness it is to keep up the milk supplies of a large city. When milk is permitted to stand for some time, the first change that occurs is the rising of the cream. If you should look at some milk through a microscope, you would see that the whiteness was due to little globules of fat. You would also 72 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. notice smaller globules of a darker color. These are made of casein, the chief nutrient in cheese. The amount of cream obtainable depends mainly on the amount of fat in the milk. Intelligent care of the milk will augment the quantity of cream. The temperature of the dairy must be kept low ; the milk should be set in shallow pans, and these should not be disturbed till the cream is skimmed off. The next change in the milk is the souring. This takes place sooner in hot weather than in cold. In the souring, an acid, known as lactic acid, is formed from the sugar in the milk, and THE COMPLETE FOOD. 73 the milk then separates into curds and whey. The curds consist mostly of casein, but they entangle also much of the fat, and a portion of the mineral matter which milk always contains. This separation into curds and whey is hastened by heat. The whey contains one-fourth of the nitro- genous matter of the milk — that is, the casein and albumen — and all the sugar, and some of the mineral matter. Milk varies in quality, according to the food given to the cows. Watery food, as brewers' grains, will thin the milk ; a small daily supply of oil-cake will enrich it. Milk is composed of water, eighty-six per cent ; mineral matters, nearly one per cent ; casein, four per cent ; milk sugar, some- times called lactose, five per cent ; and fat, four per cent, — that is, thirteen per cent is solid mat- ter — the rest is water. In other words, out of every hundred gallons of the purest milk, eighty- six gallons of water could be distilled. On account of the tendency of milk to sour, men were compelled to invent some method of preserving it, and rendering it suitable for trans- portation. In this case, as in nearly every other, necessity was the mother of invention. Condensed milk is nowadays a common article of the grocery trade. Sugar is added to milk undergoing slow evaporation. Before taking it off the fire, it is 74 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. suddenly heated to a higher degree, to destroy mold germs. The pale straw-colored sirup is then poured into tin cans, and closed from the air by soldering. Lesson XXII. Butter and Oleomargarine. When the old-fashioned barrel-churn was em- ployed, two or three hours were required to produce butter, and the labor was almost as hard as threshing with a flail. Now a churning is completed in twenty minutes, or in even less time, by means of steam machinery. Boxes with paddles inside are used for churns. The paddles, rotating rapidly, beat the cream till the butter forms. Perhaps most of the butter now sold in this country comes from creameries. These establish- ments might properly be termed butter-factories. Creamery butter is of superior quality, owing to the fact that it is made according to scientific principles. Attention is paid to the purity of the milk, to the cleanliness of the tanks and utensils, and to the coolness of the building. The exact temperature necessary for successful results in the rising of the cream and in the churning pro- BUTTER AND OLEOMARGARINE. 75 cess is always maintained. Ice is employed to cool the air, steam or hot water to warm it. The taint, or unpleasant taste, which butter sometimes has, can be avoided by preventing the access of any odor or offensive smell to the butter. Nothing will absorb odors or flavors more quickly than butter. The peculiar smell of cheese, of meat, of any kind of decaying animal or vegetable matter, will be readily absorbed by any butter near by. If strongly flavored food has been given to the cows, the flavor will be noticed more distinctly in the butter than in the milk. 7 6 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. Butter always has some salt added to it. If the salt is not perfectly pure, it will give a bitter taste to the butter. But not more than two ounces of salt should be mixed with each pound of butter, even if the butter is to be exported. When the cows are kept in stalls all the time, as in winter, receiving no green fodder, the butter made from their milk then is not yellow, but pale. Such butter is not so readily salable ; and to give a better color to it, a substance known as annatto is mixed with the cream. Annatto is not a poison, but its use to cheat BUTTER AND OLEOMARGARINE. 77 people into believing that an inferior article is a superior one, should be condemned. Watered milk is often made to* look like pure milk, by stir- ring in annatto. This dye, eaten freely, would cause serious injury. Yet its use in coloring but- ter and milk is very common. An imitation butter is now made very largely in this country and in Europe. It is called butterine, or oleomargarine, and is manufactured directly from animal fat, and not from cream. Nor is the fat used beef tallow only. Bone-fat and horse-fat often form the basis of the butterine of Europe and sometimes of American oleomargarine. Pure tallow, carefully prepared, could not injure health ; but it is a fraud on our pockets to hand us " oleo " when we pay for the much more costly article of butter. Hand-work in butter-making is rapidly falling into disuse. Even milking is now done to a lim- ited extent by machine-power. It is, as yet, an odd sight — a machine drawing milk from a cow. In most creameries, milk is poured into deep cans set in a trough. Through this runs constantly a stream of ice-cold water. The cream rises in one-third of the time required in an ordinary dairy or cellar, and the skim milk is left quite sweet, and fit to curdle for cheese. Still more quickly is the cream taken out of 78 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. the milk, by the "separator," a machine invented in the United States. This drives the cream out of the milk, while it is warm. The fresher the milk is, the better. In the picture on this page, the separator is shown with the cream running from one tube, and the milk from the other. Metal beaters, revolving by steam-power, thou- sands of times in a minute, within the iron cham- ber, cause the cream to separate and to rise to the top, whence it issues through a vent. A later invention is a new churn of immense size, that makes butter from new milk inside of a quarter of an hour. It will also make more butter FAT FROM TREES. 79 out of a given quantity of milk than any other churn, and, after making the butter, it washes the buttermilk out of it ! Now, one may think that all we need is a machine to fashion the butter into blocks, and to weigh them. Such a machine is already in the market. It divides a mass of butter into cubes, each cube weighing from one-quarter of a pound to five pounds, as may be desired, stamps the cubes, and packs them in little boxes. Lesson XXIII. Fat from Trees. Some foods, as lean meat and cheese, when digested, change into muscle ; others, as butter and salad oil, keep up the vital warmth of the body. Fat is, therefore, necessary to the daily diet of man, no matter in what climate he lives. The Hindoo, working under the scorching sun of India, is just as fond of ghcc, melted butter, as the Eskimo is of seal fat. It is true, however, that a great deal more fatty food is needed by the human system in cold weather than in summer time. We can eat butter all the year round, but it is in winter only that pork or bacon seems to be needed. So FOODS AND BEVERAGES. To us butter is so familiar that we naturally suppose every other nation uses it. Yet many civilized countries do not produce as much of it in a year as would supply the United States for even one day. In Spain, Portugal, Southern France, Italy, and Greece, butter is both rare and bad. The working people of those countries never eat it. It is scarcely ever seen even on the tables of the rich. It is unknown in tropical America. The swarming millions of Africa have never heard of it. In vast territories of Asia, butter would be' considered as odd an article of diet as the baked monkey of Brazilian Indians would be regarded in your town. What takes the place of butter in all those lands ? Oil, animal or vegetable. Southern Europe uses olive oil largely. This oil was commonly employed here for salad dressing ; but as cotton-seed oil is now very much cheaper, it is too often substituted for the finer-flavored, but more costly, olive oil. The former oil is just as wholesome as the latter. The superiority of olive oil consists in its more agreeable taste. Every fall large quantities of cotton-seed oil are sent over to Italy, bottled there, labelled as genuine olive oil, and returned to this country, being in- voiced at our custom-houses as products of Italian olives. The fraud is difficult of detection, for one oil is similar in composition to the other. FAT FROM TREES. 8 1 The oils and fats form a distinct and important section of the group of heat-giving foods. Like starch and sugar, they do not change into muscu- lar tissue, but their power of maintaining the heat of the body is nearly two and one-half times that of the starchy nutrients. Wax is also a nutritive substance, like fat, but differs from fat in not containing glycerine. The Shea-tree of North-western Africa yields a fat which is eaten by the natives. European travellers who have tasted it, declare it equal to butter. Many kinds of fruits, nuts, and seeds are eaten mainly on account of the oil they contain. No other member of the vegetable kingdom furnishes so much oil as a species of palm-tree that flourishes on the north-west coast of Africa. It is called the oil palm. One hundred pounds of palm-nut pulp will produce seventy-two pounds of oil. One hundred pounds of butter contain no more than eigh'ty-seven pounds of fat. But you would say that so dry a substance as flour has no oil whatever in it. Flour has, however, about one per cent of its weight oil. One pound of oil can be obtained from one hundred pounds of flour. One hundred-weight of fresh oatmeal will afford ten pounds of oil. Here is one reason why this latter preparation of grain is more nutritious than flour. 82 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. Besides its great use as a producer of heat, and, therefore, of force, fat or oil is the chief material of that layer of fatty tissue existing beneath the skin, and retaining the warmth in the body. Dur- ing long abstinence from food, this layer may be dissolved and taken back into the blood, thus serving the purpose of sustaining life. The remarkable food called dika-bread, used on the north-west coast of Africa, is three-quarters pure fat. The fruit from which this " bread " is made is about the size of a goose-egg. It has a large white almond-shaped kernel. The kernels, crushed, heated, and pressed, form this so-called bread, which is largely consumed by the natives of the Guinea Coast. The taste resembles that of a mixture of roasted cocoa and burned flour. Wal- nuts, filberts, peanuts, and almonds may be men- tioned as other nuts which are also rich in oil, and which could be used for food, if necessity called for such a use of them. CHEESE. 83 Lesson XXIV. Cheese. The art of cheese-making is older than written history. A primitive kind of cheese-press figures occasionally in Egyptian sculpturing, done fifteen hundred years before Christ. In England, cheese has been known since the Roman occupation. The Saxon word ccse and the Welsh eastern mean, each, "to curdle;" and it is worthy of notice that cheese is made by the curdling of the casein in milk. The separation of sweet milk into curds and whey is the first step in the preparation of cheese. On the addition of an acid to milk, the casein, which comprises most of the solids, turns into curds, the milk-sugar remaining in the whey, a slightly clouded liquid, which is composed largely of the water of the milk. This change is effected, not by the employment of any of the ordinary acids, but by means of rennet. Rennet is a liquid, prepared from the stomach of the calf, by first cleaning the stomach and then soaking it in brine for a few days. The brine is drained off and bottled for use. A half-pint of it will curdle four hundred quarts of milk. The 8 4 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. milk must be heated before the rennet is added to it. Generally, the thermometer must show that the milk's temperature is 84° Fahrenheit, or the rennet will not be poured in. After the curd begins to form, the heat is increased to 98 ; at this degree, the complete souring of the mass occurs. The whey must be well strained from the curd, or the cheese would ferment, turn sour, and spoil. If any cream should rise, the whole vat of milk CHEESE. 85 must be stirred again and again. To drain off the whey, the curd must be cut into blocks, worked back and forth with a four-barred paddle wired across the bars, then turned with a large skim- ming-dish, and cut again, prior to being lifted into the cheese-vat. The curd is covered with canvas, and then pressed in the vat till it is hard and nearly dry. Next, the curd is broken up, mixed with salt — a pound of salt to twenty pounds of cheese usually — and put into the press. Cheese-presses differ in respect of the form given to the curd. You 86 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. have seen cheese in various shapes, and, therefore, you know that a Brie or an Edam cheese bears but slight resemblance to the large cheeses made in our own country. For a week or ten days the cheese is taken out of the press every day, examined for signs of mold, rubbed with salt, and returned to its box frame. Finally, it is washed, rubbed with butter, and then stored away to ripen. Hand-made cheese is a common dairy-product of several European countries — notably of Switzer- land. In the United States, only factory cheese is made. We export to various countries over one hundred million pounds of it yearly. Our Ameri- can cheese is made from whole milk, like the English Cheshire. Cheese obtained from milk from which the cream has been removed, is called skim-milk cheese. Dutch cheese is an example. Neufchatel and some other kinds of soft cheese contain considerable cream. Cheddar and Stilton are names applied to dif- ferent kinds of cheese, each kind, however, being of high grade. They are made with great care, and are not fully ripened until about a year from making them. Stilton contains more cream than Cheddar, is nearly self-drained, and is shaped under very slight pressure. Roquefort and Brie cheeses are products of French dairies. Roquefort WHAT OTHERS EAT 87 is the highest-priced cheese sold in the American market. A moist, crumbly cheese is more readily digested, if fairly rich in cream, than a dryer skim-milk one. As there is but very little heat-giving nutriment in cheese, it should be eaten with bread, rice, or some other starchy food. Cheese is a muscle- former, and also contains much bone-making material. The blue mold which makes its appearance in old and ripe cheese, such as Stilton, is a fungus, said to be caused by leaving the broken curd open to the air before pressing. Cheese is naturally pale-yellow in color. The dark-yellow and orange hues, seen in foreign cheeses, are due to annatto, the same dye that is used to color milk. One pound of cheese contains as much nourishment as two pounds of beef. Lesson XXV. What Others Eat. Man must have variety in his fare. The daily waste of his body has to be repaired by food con- taining all the elements needed to make blood, muscle, fat, nerve-tissue, and brain matter. In 88 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. Europe and in America men have hunted high and low, on land, and in the sea, to satisfy their crav- ings for variety in diet. There are not, perhaps, ten persons in a thousand who will eat a meal con- sisting of only one article of food, provided their choice of dishes is not limited. Brute creatures are restricted to one sort of provender usually. They feed on fish, flesh, or vegetables ; man is the universal eater. There is scarcely a living thing that flies in the air, swims in the water, or stirs on the land, that is not forced to minister to man's appetite. Scrip- ture tells us, " Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you." To any one noting the wide and varied range of the animal food devoured by human beings, the Scriptural promise seems to be almost literally fulfilled. The nose of the moose is considered a dainty mouthful in Canada. Sharks' fins, birds' nests, and ducks' tongues are eaten in China. The Chumars of India eat the flesh of animals that have died of disease, and will touch no other meat. Elephant's trunk is a table dainty in Africa. Rat pie may be procured in Paris restaurants : and the negroes of Brazil, like the black people of Australia, eat every rat they can catch. In the last-named country, kangaroo tail is regarded as a luxury for the dinner-tables of even wealthy and cultivated Cau- casians. WHAT OTHERS EAT. 89 Both the ancient Greeks and Persians were fond of camel's flesh, and the Arabs of our own day consider young camel, well roasted, superior to veal. The Tartars cut the hump into slices, dis- solve these in tea, and drink this oily tea as a beverage. In the Barbary States, camel's tongue, salted, is a common article of diet. In Kordofan the giraffe is hunted for its flesh, and in South Africa the Hottentots deem the marrow of the animal a delicacy of the highest value. The flesh of the whale furnishes food to the natives in many countries — New Zealand, Brazil, Japan, several West India islands, and espe- cially the Arctic regions. The Eskimo, however, regards a seal-steak as the best of earthly viands. The inhabitants of Queensland esteem sea-cow very highly as a breakfast dish, and the Malays of the Dutch East Indies agree with them. The nobles of England thought porpoise meat an excellent article for their feasts, even so late as Queen Elizabeth's reign ; and the modern Green- landers find porpoise oil the most delicious of all drinks. Broiled canary is a favorite dish in cafes in the Madeira Islands. In Jamaica parrots can be readily obtained, served up for eating in any style you wish. No doubt it would require several big canaries to give a hungry boy meat enough for dinner ; but it would take more than several 90 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. hungry boys to finish at one dinner a bird used by South Africans as food — the ostrich. Green turtle is agreeable to most American palates, yet which of us would not refuse to eat its brother reptile, the crocodile ? This scaly monster is, however, in high favor with the epicures of Siam. Another reptile, the iguana, the most hideous-looking of all crawling things, is greedily devoured by the Indians of Brazil. West India negroes are very fond of fried snake, preferring it to chicken. It is marvellous to note what the human stom- ach will digest. Flies' eggs, gathered from putrid fish, are swallowed in China ; silkworms in Mada- gascar ; beetles in South America, and crickets in East Africa. New Caledonians will eat spiders in preference to any other food. Bees are eaten in Ceylon ; ants in Hindostan ; grasshoppers in Africa ; centipedes in Brazil ; caterpillars in Aus- tralia, and devil-fishes in France. In our own country, these strange articles of food will probably long remain strange. Yet the people who eat them are as strong and healthy, apparently, as if they had never tasted any meat but beef or mutton. THE ANIMAL THIRD IN VALUP:. 91 Lesson XXVI. The Animal Third in Value. The use of meat increases with the increase in population. As the world progresses in civili- zation, it consumes more animal food, regarding it as the best restorer of body or brain exhausted by daily labor. Any race eating but little meat is a weak race. Starchy foods and feeble men occupy the same zone. To acquire and keep up a good meat -appetite, man must live and work several degrees from the Equator. And in this truth the whole future of the meat question is contained. The Northern races, who are the meat-consum- ing races, are steadily augmenting in numbers and gaining possession of the earth. Thus the future demand for meat must be immense — such as will tax the pasture regions of the world to satisfy. The United States has about fifty million sheep and the same number of horned cattle. Russia is the only other country having any pretensions to compete with us in wealth in cows and oxen ; yet that great empire owns only thirty millions of those useful beasts. The Argentine Republic and Australia possess, each, more sheep than the 92 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. United States, because land is cheaper and less fertile in those countries. Sheep may be pastured on soil that cannot raise wheat. Pork holds the third place in the nutritive values of the animal foods, ranking after beef and mutton. Almost any kind of meat is easier of digestion than vegetables, and meat contains a very much larger portion of the materials that form muscle and brain. But we need fat also to assist respiration and to maintain the internal heat. For these purposes pork is an admirable food. It is a favorite meat all over the world. To gain an idea of the importance of the pork business of the Union, we must calculate the value of the hogs first. These number sixty million. Then let us set down the figures representing the aggregate selling-price of the multitudes of these animals slaughtered every year. One city, Chi- cago, kills over five million hogs annually. Cin- cinnati, Louisville, Milwaukee, Kansas City, St. Louis, and Indianapolis are other centres of the pork-packing industry. The wages paid to hand- workers in this employment amount yearly to many millions of dollars. Twenty years ago the swine in the United States were nearly all of the white breed, now the black is most numerous. The latter breed has been found to have hardier skins, and is, there- THE BEST FARE. 93 fore, less affected than the white variety by exposure to sun and rain and frost. Germany, France, England, Austro-Hungary — all these countries use large quantities of pork. We export, year after year, about $100,000,000 worth of pork-products, and yet we eat at home an amount of them much greater in value than even that enormous quantity. Lesson XXVII. The Best Fare. Chemists tell us that lean meat contains a large quantity of that important food element, nitrogen, in its most digestible form. Were there no nitro- gen in the food we eat, death would soon overtake us. Fine flour has but very little of this necessary nutriment. A famous French surgeon fed two large dogs on white bread and water in order to ascertain how long such a diet would support animal life. Both dogs died in forty days. But dogs kept well and strong that were fed on bread made from whole-wheat meal — bread containing the nitrogen of the wheat as well as its starch. How does meat, the food richest in nitrogen, strengthen the body ? By repairing exhausted 94 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. muscles. As no other articles of diet than those in which nitrogen is found can do that service for us, we may rightly call such nitrogenous foods muscle-formers. Again, meats not only furnish material for brain and nerve tissue, but also con- tribute carbon, or fat, to the system. Carbon is the chemical name of the food element which maintains the body's vital heat. Americans consider beef the meat most agree- able to the palate, most easy of digestion, and most strengthening to the human frame. So great is our demand for beef that the price of choice cuts is high, though this country raises THE BEST FARE. 95 more cattle than any other country in either hemisphere. As beef-eaters, the English people rank next to us. The typical Englishman is usually pictured as a jolly, heavy-bodied farmer, and is called John Bull. Away back as far as the days of King Henry VIII., a company of men in the king's service, known as Yeomen of the Guard, were appointed to the ridiculous service of guarding the sideboard in which the royal dishes were placed. Such a piece of furniture was then termed a buffet, and the guards were named buffcticrs. The ignorant classes changed this name into " beef-eaters," and Beef-eaters the Yeo- men were called for three hundred and fifty years. They were disbanded in 1887, and their mediaeval uniform is now to be seen only in pictures. How quiet, patient, and faithful an ox is ! His terrible head and horns cause him to appear fero- cious in the extreme ; yet, having seen him at work, we know that he is one of the gentlest of beasts. In a pretty fable, the seemingly fierce creature, addressing a beautiful young lady, asks, " If a visitor from some other planet saw us both now, would he not be astonished to learn that I am not going to eat you, but that you are going to eat me?" Wild cattle were common in Europe two thou- g6 FOODS A AD BEVERAGES. sand years ago. A splendid breed once made the forests in the North of England celebrated hunting resorts for fearless sportsmen. These cattle were pure white in color, with black muzzles and long white horns tipped with black. In two or three private parks a few specimens of this noble stock are still to be seen. The vast herds of cattle, which once ran wild over our own western prai- ries, were descendants of the tame species brought to the New World by the Spanish settlers. The English wild cattle came from some drove intro- duced into the island during the Roman occu- pation. Lesson XXVIII. Prizes for Improvement. English cattle are the finest in the world. For many years past, farmers, graziers, cattle- breeders — all persons in England interested in cows and dairy products have united in encoura- ging the higher development of stock-raising. The population of Great Britain has rapidly increased during this century ; and, as fast as cities, towns, and villages multiplied, pasture ground grew less in area. The graziers were obliged to have re- PRIZES FOR IMPROVEMENT. 97 course to science to aid them in producing beeves enough to supply the demands of the markets. The cost of meat has, however, advanced, but the working classes earn higher wages than they received formerly ; so that they can afford to buy dear meat more often than their fathers could purchase the cheap beef of earlier days. Prizes have been given in various portions of our own country, year after year, for improved breeds of cows. At most agricultural fairs a 9 8 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. medal or a certificate is awarded to the exhibitor of the cow that yields the largest quantity of milk or the milk richest in cream. The amount of milk drawn from a prize cow is usually recorded every day for an entire year, together with the weight of the butter made from the milk in that time. And each cow, if of pure breed, as a Jersey or an Alderney, is numbered, in order to trace her record more easily. The United States can now boast of several cows valued at over twenty thousand dollars each. It is the system of selecting only the best PRIZES FOR IMPROVEMENT. 99 animals for keeping, that has given us our present superior grade of cattle. Whenever a specially good point of excellence has appeared in any beast, the animal has been saved from slaughter. Thus the pedigree cattle have been developed. About the middle of this century the longhorns held the place which the shorthorns now hold in the estimation of farmers. Thirty-two picked cows of each breed were once tested as to the quality and quantity of the milk given. The shorthorns yielded 538 pounds of milk with 66y 2 pounds of curd, while the milk product of the longhorns weighed 553 pounds, having 69 pounds of curd. One breed excelled in the quality of the milk obtained, the other breed in the quantity. More cream could be got from one breed, more cheese from the other. There has also been a steady improvement in the raising of cattle destined for the butcher. The longhorns mature early, and give the greatest number of prime cuts from the back and ribs. This breed can be fattened more readily than any other variety of cattle. Oxen, when in their sixth year, are fittest for slaughtering, but the desire for a quick return of the money invested causes a large number of them to be killed when they have barely ceased to be calves. While the quality of our meat has been im- IOO FOODS AND BEVERAGES. proved, owing partly to the stimulus of prizes, it is to be regretted that the slaughter-houses in many cities are as vile as the shambles of the Middle Ages. The clean, rapid, humane methods of killing, employed in the immense abattoirs of Chicago, should be adopted wherever beef is dressed for sale. From the time of Moses, the Hebrew butcher has been teaching us mercy to the dumb beasts slain for our benefit ; yet it is only lately that we have perceived the wisdom and mercifulness of his mode of slaughtering. He does not kill the doomed animal with the brutal pole-axe, but divides, with his keen knife, the large arteries of the neck, and the creature's life ebbs painlessly away with the blood. Lesson XXIX. Beef. Our food must be palatable that we may eat it with relish, and get the greatest nourishment from it. The flavoring quality of food — its taste, in fact — stimulates the production of those secre- tions, such as the saliva and the gastric juice, by the action of which the food is dissolved in digestion. As food, then, must be relished, it is BEEF. IOI- desirable that our diet should be varied in charac- ter. We should not be restricted to a choice between vegetables and meat. By due mixture of both meats and vegetables, by occasionally varying the' kinds of each class of foods, and by judicious cooking, the necessa v r elements of our daily fare are furnished not only the most cheaply but also in the proportion to do the human system the most service. Now, if we were to limit our diet to wheat flour, we should be obliged to eat nearly four and one-half pounds of white bread in order to get our necessary daily supply of flesh or muscle-forming substances — the nitrogenous materials which we have mentioned. But this amount of bread would give twice as much starchy matter as would be needed. As it could not be used, it would clog the system, and in a short time this mode of dieting would result in serious injury to the health of the person indulging in it. Animal food is generally richer than vegetable in the nitrogenous elements ; so, by eating lean beef, for example, with the bread, 102- FOODS AND BEVERAGES. we shall have a supply of both the needed carbon, found in the flour, and the equally necessary nitrogen, provided in the meat. And this mixed fare will enable us to do a great deal more labor. Twelve ounces of beef may be used instead of thirty-three ounces of the bread, and yet the body be a gainer thereby. What are the sources of our immense supplies of beef ? The steak on your plate to-day may have come from some ox raised near your home. Vast droves of cattle from far Western plains help to cover the meat-hooks in the markets of the East. Steamer loads of beeves, selected also from West- ern herds, are sent every day to the swarming millions of Europe. We import but little meat, salt or fresh, the boundless prairies of our own great West feeding more cattle than any other country on the globe possesses. American beeves are heavier than those of any other nation, except perhaps the oxen of France. Some idea of the gigantic industry of beef-exporting from the United States may be obtained from consideration of the fact that we send to Europe nearly seven hundred thousand tons of beef, fresh and salt, every year. Hun- dreds of millions of dollars are invested in the cattle business ; thousands and thousands of men earn good wages in it. THE SOUL OF THE FARM. 103 How many departments it might be divided into — the work on the lonely Western ranches ; the transportation to the abattoirs, or to the sea- ports ; the slaughtering and dressing for market ; the distribution of the meat to the wholesale dealers first, next to the butchers, and, lastly, to the consumers ! And each of these branches of the cattle trade might be divided into a dozen subdivisions. Yet the rearing of cows and oxen for slaughter is a new business in the United States. It was unknown here in Colonial days. It was but slight in amount, at even so late a period as the close of the Civil War. Railroads, built across the vast pasture territories beyond the Mississippi, ren- dered it possible for the cattle-ranchman of Wyo- ming to sell his beef at a profit in New York. Lesson XXX. The Soul of the Farm. To tame a wild animal, and to place it under favorable conditions of food and shelter, will improve it in flesh and covering. The wild sheep has a scanty growth of loose, straggling hair — it could not be called wool. The long, fine, silky 104 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. fleece of our best sheep is the reward of years and years of patient selection and good feeding. To-day the wealth and power of a nation depend largely on its manufactures, and their outgrowth, commerce. Yet the manufacturer relies for food on the farmer. It is curious to notice, however, that countries whose main source of wealth is agriculture are often swept by famine, while in manufacturing nations people never starve by thousands, as is too often the case in lands where farming is the chief occupation. India and Ire- land are melancholy examples of farming countries in which mills and factories are too few. As money will buy food anywhere, the inhabit- ants of a manufacturing country are not forced to choose between starvation and the products of their own fields only. Or, steamers, loaded with goods, may be sent to every port on the globe from which provisions are shipped, and cargoes of food will be gladly exchanged for the manu- factured articles. England's rise in wealth and commerce began with the introduction of woollen manufactures into the country. The cloth-makers wanted more wool. To supply it, the farmers had to raise more sheep. Then the quality of the English fleeces had to be improved. What causes the difference in the amount of wear, in the appearance, cost and THG SOUL OF THE FARM. 105 fineness, of a suit of clothes made of good cloth and a suit cut from cheap material ? Chiefly the difference in the length of the fibres of the wool. The wool of the English sheep was short and coarse. Large numbers of Spanish sheep, known as Merinos, were brought into Great Britain in order that farmers might be enabled to supply manufacturers with wool of a higher grade. The farmers soon found that they would gain two profits from the money spent in bettering their flocks. The fleeces could be sold to the wool merchants, the carcasses to the butchers. As sheep nibble the grass, unlike cattle, they can be pastured on hills and meadows where cows would starve. Practically, here was still another profit for the farmer. Waste land, too barren to pay for ploughing it, too scantily covered with grass to feed his cattle, could be used to support large numbers of the very animals it was most profitable for him to raise. Hence arose the proverb, " A flock of sheep is the soul of a farm." Nowadays the vast, grassy plains of Australia, of South Africa, and of the Argentine Republic, afford pasturage for nothing to the sheep-raiser, and Europe's supplies of mutton and wool are drawn largely from those countries. The cities of Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne send, on the average, twelve thousand sheep to London every week. 106 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. Lesson XXXI. Iced Meat. Many persons prefer mutton to beef. And there are very few of us who do not consider a lamb chop equal to even sirloin steak. In the South of Europe the mutton is better than in the North, and replaces beef on the tables of the rich. Mutton is the sole flesh food of the pastoral peoples of Asia and Africa, but in Holland and Germany it is, strangely enough, regarded as inferior to pork. In every hundred pounds of lean mutton, seventy- five pounds will be water, and ten or eleven will be nitrogenous matter, the food of the brain, nerves, and muscles. When sheep began to increase by the million in Australia, it became impossible there to consume the flesh for food. Millions of pounds of the fin- est mutton were destroyed every spring, the sheep being slaughtered and boiled down simply for their tallow. In the Argentine Republic the same shocking waste of valuable food was com- mitted year after year. Why was not the mutton carried to European cities and sold ? Because no means of transporting it to market across the ICED MEAT. 107 ocean, in a condition fresh enough to consume, had then been devised. Men knew that ice will preserve meat, but how was this knowledge to be utilized ? How could money be made by carrying meat from distant countries to Europe? In 1779 some Russian explorers found that a part of the bank on the left side of the Lena River had fallen away ; and, on examination, they discovered a specimen of the extinct mammoth, an animal larger than the ele- phant, imbedded in a mass of ice which underlay the soil. The frozen flesh was perfectly sound, and their dogs fed on it greedily. If those dogs could have known that they were eating meat from the body of a beast that had been dead a hundred thousand years ! The toiling millions of Europe were urgently demanding cheap meat ; the sheep-breeders of various countries were anxious to sell their mutton. A way was soon devised to bring the meat to the consumers. Steamers were built with double sides, filled in between with ice, and having arrangements for keeping cold air constantly cir- culating through large chambers in the hold. In these the dressed mutton is stored, and is deliv- ered fresh in London. Beef can, of course, be safely transported in like manner. Till lately, millions of cattle have been 108 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. slaughtered in Russia merely for their hides, there being no sale for their meat in that empire. Now, great abattoirs having been built in Libau, refrig- erator steamers, loaded with thousands of tons of beef, sail from that city weekly to the great sea- ports of Western Europe. This Russian beef trade is more profitable than Australia's mutton- exporting industry, because the voyage from Libau to London can be made in a much shorter time than a steamer can go from any Australian port to England. Refrigerator cars are run on nearly all our rail- roads ; and in summer they prove very valuable, bringing the meat of the great West into the markets of the crowded East. Diseased cattle or hogs and unsound meat are not allowed to be exported. The European buyer of American animal food is protected at the expense of the American Government. OTHER MODES OF PRESERVATION. 109 Lesson XXXII. Other Modes of Preservation. Dead meat will decay, and, later on, will become putrid. These changes are due to oxygen in the water which (we have learned) makes up the greater part of all meat. Exclude the oxygen, and the meat will keep sound. Salting is the method of preserving meat most familiar to us. Salt absorbs the water, and forms a chemical compound in which the oxygen is inert. By this method the meat is rendered less digestible, however, and prolonged use of salt meat will cause scurvy. This disease made fearful ravages among our hardest-working bread-winners, the sail- ors, till scientific men discovered that lime-juice would counteract the evil effects of a salt-meat diet. Now, by law, every master of a vessel is obliged to give his crew a certain quantity of lime- juice on every voyage. In the Torrid Zone, drying the meat in the sun is the favorite mode of curing it. The bones are removed from the carcass, the remainder is cut into strips, and hung up out-doors to dry. In less than a day the moisture is fully evaporated, and the dried, or "jerked," meat will last for 110 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. months without traces of decay appearing. Meat is sometimes smoked instead of sun-drying it. Smoking is the common mode of preserving bacon. Ham is often cured by using sugar instead of salt. Meat dried in wood smoke has the advan- tage of being preserved, to some extent, from further change, even should such meat become moist. This gain is due to the creosote, or car- bolic acid, which is always present in smoke from wood. Meat dipped in a watery solution of car- bolic acid will dry up without becoming offensive in odor or taste. To smoke meat affects it some- what similarly to cooking it — the nitrogenous matter thickens, as the white of an egg becomes denser in boiling. Wood is often soaked in carbolic acid to render it more durable in wet places. As the smoke slowly penetrates the meat, it sends the water off in vapor, thus drying the tissues. It also imparts to the meat the odor of the fuel used. The flavor of Westphalia hams is due to the juniper twigs burned under them. Corn-cobs are often employed in the United States as smoke producers. Joints to be preserved have been coated with various substances, such as paraffin, collodion, mixtures of molasses and gelatine and of gelatine A FRENCHMAN'S PLAN. Ill and glycerine. Several chemicals that absorb oxygen have been tried — the sulphites of lime, magnesia, and soda. For mercantile reasons these methods have failed of success. Lesson XXXIII. A Frenchman's Plan. Oxygen is an element of the air as well as of the water. This gas is present in plants, in ani- mals, in rocks. One-third of the earth's crust, thirty miles in thickness, is composed of oxygen. It is the great natural agent of decay. Yet every minute of our lives we breathe several cubic feet of it. Oxygen is, therefore, a source of life as well as of death. But as any dead plant or ani- mal attacked by it decomposes or becomes putrid, the gas must be excluded from contact with any animal or vegetal substance which is to be pre- served for any length of time. Smoking, salting, drying, and freezing are the older processes for keeping meat free from oxy- gen. They were found inconvenient for com- mercial purposes. Dealers wanted some mode of preservation that would permit safe and rapid handling of the meat. Need stimulates invention. 112 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. A clever Frenchman, Appert, suggested that the meat be boiled in cans till the water in it was driven off in vapor through a small opening in the top of each can. This opening being then quickly soldered over, the air would be permanently ex- cluded. The plan met with instant favor, and has benefited trade incalculably. The art of preserving flesh-food by canning has saved millions of tons of meats from being wasted ; it has promoted various industries ; it has kept down the price of butchers meat in every village and city in the land, and has brought a nourishing food within the reach of the poor, to an extent of which they themselves are unconscious. Before being placed in the tins, the meat is, of course, freed from bone. Experience has taught the canners that a solution of chloride of calcium is superior to pure water for boiling the meat in the cans, because this chemical preparation is capa- ble of being heated several degrees above the boiling point of water. The air and moisture are not supposed to be fully driven out of the meat until, after several minutes of boiling, there is a sudden outrush of steam. When the expulsion of air is judged to be com- plete, the cans are quickly soldered up, and the contents will keep sound a great length of time. The canned meat often receives an addition of A FRENCHMAN'S PLAN. 113 some gravy or a little spice or salt. This canning process is now used to preserve those edible vege- tal products also which, under ordinary circum- stances, would be likely to decay. Canned meats and vegetables are moderate in price, and generally are wholesome. If, however, the contents have not been so thoroughly boiled as to have expelled all the oxygen, decay or pu- trefaction will result. Those changes may be detected by pressing with the fingers on the bot- tom of the can. Should a crackling of the tin be heard, it is an indication that gases have already formed inside, and the can should be rejected without hesitation. To eat decayed food is to invite death. Oftentimes dishonest dealers, having on hand a stock of decomposed canned-goods, will attempt to defraud customers by punching a hole in each can (to let the gas escape), soldering over the hole, and concealing it with a label. In the fac- tory only one aperture is made in each can. A can, having two soldered vent-holes, should be forwarded to the nearest Board of Health. The substance in any such can is poisonous. 114 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. Lesson XXXIV. White Treasures. The most useful conquest that man has made in the class of birds is the domestication of the com- mon fowl. In all civilized nations, the meat and eggs of this feathered tribe are valued highly as food ; and it is worthy of notice that the races of birds, most used as meat food, also lay the great- est number of eggs. All eggs are edible. The negroes of Guiana consider even the eggs of that huge snake, the boa-constrictor, to be quite dainty articles of food. In Senegambia the natives are very fond of alligators' eggs. These, singularly enough, are yolkless. It is only, however, in the eggs of the hen that there is an extensive trade. The eggs of the goose, duck, and turkey are generally consumed locally, or else are employed for setting. Probably most persons do not fully comprehend how much nourishment there is in an egg when it is properly cooked. Like milk, the egg contains everything necessary for the development of a perfect animal, as is plain from the fact that a chick is formed from an egg. It is a mystery how muscles, bones, feathers, and all the materials that a chicken WHITE TREASURES. 115 needs for its development, are found in the yolk and white of an egg. The egg, then, is a com- plete food. Eggs, raw or soft-boiled, are easily digested, and are more nutritive than twice their weight of the best beefsteak. The number of eggs consumed yearly in this country is so large as almost to exceed belief. The egg traffic in New York City alone amounts to over $9,000,000 annually. In Cincinnati, Chi- cago, Indianapolis, St. Louis, and other cities, the egg business is as great proportionally. The total value of the eggs sold every year in the United States has been estimated at $70,000,000, the home produce being the enormous number of 9,000,000,000 eggs. Yet we import over 15,000,- 000 dozen yearly ! The perishable nature of eggs has restricted the trade in them somewhat. Even the ingenious method of packing them in mill-board partitions, an egg in each square cell, has not proved wholly satisfactory. It occurred to a young clerk, in a provision store in St. Louis, that eggs, as well as milk, might be condensed. He patented the pro- cess now known as drying or desiccating eggs. The egg is converted into a glassy-looking sub- stance, amber-tinted, reduced to one-eighth of its original bulk ; and yet it retains its nutritive prop- erties for years. This process is a remarkable Il6 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. illustration of the power of science. It will have an important bearing on the question of cheaper food by preventing waste and making the price of eggs nearly equal throughout the year. In the dried form, eggs may be transported, without injury, to any part of the earth, and can, at any time, be restored to their original condition, simply by adding the water which has been arti- ficially taken away. The principal egg-desiccating companies are located in New York and St. Louis. No salt or other foreign matter is used in the pro- cess of desiccation, the product being simply a mixture (condensed) of the yolk and albumen. Lesson XXXV. Feathered Cheer. All the world knows the excellence of the flesh of domestic poultry. No feast is complete without fowl. One noticeable point in the com- position of lean poultry meat is the absence of fat. The leanest beef or mutton that you have ever eaten contained eight or ten per cent of fat in its tissues. When much fat is present in the flesh of fowl, the meat is less delicate in flavor and less digestible. FEATHERED CHEER. 117 In ancient Rome the art of fattening hens, and, at the same time, imparting a peculiar flavor to their flesh, was brought to a high degree of per- fection. The demand for fat hens grew so great that at length the Consul Fannius issued a decree, forbidding the fattening process, as he feared that not a living hen would be left in Italy. In still earlier times, the Egyptians knew how to hatch out chickens in ovens. This secret method of artificial hatching was lost, and re- mained unknown till it was discovered again in the last century. It is practised at the present day with the most satisfactory results. A steam- heated apparatus, called an incubator, will hatch out 12,000 chickens at a time, and will hatch them out more rapidly and safely than would be possible in the natural way. Poultry vary in size as widely as any other ani- mals. The average weight of barnyard fowls is y/ 2 pounds each, in the United States; in Morocco, 14 pounds. The varieties regarded as best for the poulterer are the Surrey, Dorking, and Houdan. These should be more generally known here. American pork is the finest in the world, but American poultry is the worst. Our fowls are neither carefully bred nor reared. East- ern butchers describe Texan steers as all legs and horns. European cooks say that American chick- 118 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. ens are all legs and elbows, covered with ugly yellow skin. Nevertheless, having no better fowls at hand, we consume every year more than 55,000,000 of these despised bipeds. It is pleasant to learn, though, that roast Ameri- can turkey is highly praised by foreign epicures, their opinion agreeing with ours as to the palatable qualities of our only native fowl. The breast of the wild turkey, fried in the oil of the black bear, is said to be the most delicious of all meats. In China, the number of ducks used for food is so great that it has been found necessary from time immemorial to hatch the young by artificial heat. The tame duck is not so much esteemed as a table fowl here as in other countries ; but the famous canvas-back duck, shot on the shores of Chesapeake Bay, is held in the highest regard. In France and in England great attention is paid to the rearing of ducks for the market. The great antiquity of the goose, as a food-bird, may be partly guessed when we learn that it is represented on an ancient Egyptian monument as undergoing preparation for roasting at the hands of the king's chief cook. France raises more geese than any other country. Strasburg is noted for its curious meat -pies, made out of geese-livers enlarged by a special mode of feeding. The geese are put into small, dark cells, to pre- FEATHERED CHEER. 1 1 9 vent the birds from moving. These are fed to repletion with nourishing paste, and their only drink is water in which sulphur has been dissolved. When the fattening process is completed, the birds are killed and the livers taken out. A liver weighs from two and one-half to four pounds — often more than the bird's carcass weighs. The body is usually shrivelled out of shape. Each liver, having been larded with truf- fles for a week, is placed in an earthen dish, and baked for about five hours. Cooked livers are sent in tin boxes all over the world. Passenger pigeons furnish American tables with an immense quantity of wild meat, cheap, nutri- tious, and well-flavored. In one day, seven tons of these birds have been brought into the markets of New York. Pigeons have been seen in flocks, computed by such skilled observers as the great ornithologists, Wilson and Audubon, to contain thousands of millions of birds. 120 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. Lesson XXXVI. The Harvest of the Sea. There is a great difference in the cost of animal food raised on the land, and animal food obtained from the sea. Poultry and live-stock derive their sustenance from the produce of the earth, but fish of all kinds feed themselves at no expense to man. The fisheries have another advantage over agri- culture — nature alone is charged with sowing the field which the fisherman reaps. The products of the ocean, as well as the land crops, enter largely into the food resources of man- kind. The fisheries supply our home markets, and also furnish to trade merchandise for export. When treating of working the soil for food, we spoke of large and small farms. In fishing, the small farms are the coast fisheries, or the fisheries of the lakes ; the large farms find their parallels in vast expanses of the sea, well known as the feeding-grounds of fish. In one occupation, the composition of the earth and the needs of the plants have to be studied ; in the other, the depths of the waters and the instincts of the finny tribes. We are beginning to appreciate more justly this THE HARVEST OF THE SEA. 121 grand industry of the deep. Hitherto we have neglected a food supply sufficient for the support of millions of human lives. Numerous species of food-fishes, palatable and nutritious, have been left untouched. In the United States thousands of tons of fish are used every year for fertilizing farm lands. The seas, lakes, and rivers teem with animal life suitable for human food. It is evident that a more abundant supply of fish would lower the price of butcher's meat. A revival of a healthful habit of America's early settlers — that of living largely on sea products — would solve the puzzling problem of procuring cheap flesh food for the toiling millions hived in all our great cities. The fishing resources of our own vast extent of coast are very great, but, as yet, they are only very little developed. Many varieties of fish, highly valued in Europe, are never used here. Of the 1,563 finny species found in the waters of the United States, only 150 are offered for sale in our markets. Every year the wholesale fish-dealers of New York receive about 30,000,000 pounds of fish of different kinds. Yet two-thirds of this weight is made up of six varieties only — cod, bluefish, hali- but, haddock, porgics, and flounders. Some years ago the fish-culturists treated them- 122 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. selves to a dinner of sea delicacies hardly known here even by name. The bill of fare comprised fifty-eight distinct species of fish, nearly all being strangers to American palates. Japanese sea- weed, Chinese dried fish-maws, and desiccated octopus (devil-fish) eggs were among the items in the list of edibles. The Fish Commission of the United States is doing a great work in its examination of the worth of various fishes as food, and in its efforts to intro- duce favorite European fish into the waters of this country. By means of the Commission's hatcheries millions of young fry are produced every month from the ova, or eggs. Placed in waters suitable for their development, the young fish soon grow large enough to serve as food. Thus our mountain streams may soon be stocked with brook trout ; our rivers with salmon, with carp from Germany, mullet from Jamaica, gourami from India, and with dozens of other fishes, equally nutritious and palatable. TRAWLING. 123 Lesson XXXVII. Trawling. There are home fisheries and distant ones ; fishing-banks netted all the year round, and others swept only at certain seasons. The chief distant fishing-grounds are the shallows, or " banks," off the coast of Newfoundland. These banks abound with cod. This variety of fish has been caught by the hundred million, year after year, for three centuries, mainly on the Newfoundland banks, and yet to-day the cod is one of the most plentiful of all the food-fishes. Codfish are taken also off the Norwegian coast, near the rocky group of islets called the Loffoden Islands. Fishermen from all parts of maritime Europe resort there. The shore-waters of Iceland and the North Sea are other noted fishing-stations where cod are found in large numbers. The North Sea, or German Ocean, is the most active scene of British fishing. The bed of the sea was once dry land, and Great Britain then was a part of the Continent of Europe. A wide- spread shoal, the Great Dogger Bank, runs north and south for over 300 miles, and is a rich feeding- ground for myriads of fish. 124 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. In summer time one may see from 2,000 to 3,000 fishing smacks sailing over this bank. Steamers take the fresh fish from the small vessels to the nearest convenient port in England, whence the fish are sent by railroad to the large cities in the interior. The fish are conveyed in boats from the little vessels to the steamers. This work is dangerous in foul weather. The boatmen take their lives in their hands, and fatal accidents often happen. TRAWLING. 125 The fish keep to the bottom of the sea, where their food is to be found. They are caught in trawl-nets which " trawl," or trail, on the shoal, or sandbank, as the vessels sail along. A long heavy bar and a ground-rope start the fish into the net, a triangle-shaped, bag-like trap, woven of cotton twine. Stalwart sailors haul up the net, the fish falling down into its pointed end. A net-full of fish in one great heap on the deck — hundreds of leaping fish, their silvery scales gleaming in the sun, ugly dog-fishes floundering here and there, and huge crabs scurrying in all directions — how interesting such a sight would be to the pupils of this school ! A cast of a net on the Dogger Bank would probably capture many food-fish whose appearance in an American market would arouse curiosity. Soles, plaices, brills, dorys, ling, and whiting are not familiar names to us. Nor should we recognize the refuse of the take either, the scidch, English fishermen term it. Many classes of the inhabit- ants of the sea are unfit for man's use. If caught, they are thrown back into the water. Queer names are those bestowed on the unwelcome fel- low-citizens of the food-fishes — stingrays, cats, dogs, toads, scruff, candy, and hags ! Pilchard fishing is an important industry on the south-west coast of England. The pilchard be- 126 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. longs to the herring tribe, and is a fish almost unknown here ; yet thousands of persons would be brought to the verge of starvation, if no school of this fish visited the shores of the island of Great Britain this year. Each district has its huer, stationed on a high cliff, from which he scans the water for signs of the presence of a "school." His experienced eye detects the pilchards while yet they are miles away, and his warning call, the hue-and-cry, arouses the idlers in every fisherman's cottage. If the fish are close in-shore, boats, describing a half-circle in the water, throw seines around the school. The seines are then hauled in, and the catch is spread on the beach. When the pilchards run too far out at sea for the seines to be used, drift-nets, worked from fishing-vessels, are em- ployed. Some years ago the largest school of pilchards ever seen visited the coast near the port of St. Ives, and in one day the fishermen of that small town netted three hundred thousand dollars' worth of the fish. SOME FISH SPORTS. 1 27 Lesson. XXXVIII. Some Fish Sports. Florists and fruit-growers tell us that it is not uncommon for plants to send out "sports." These sports are unexpected variations in flowers or fruits. If a sport is deemed worth propagating, its growth is fostered, its seeds are planted, and a new variety is thus added to the vegetable king- dom. An apple on a tree in Ribstone Park, Yorkshire, England, was found to have a flavor different from that of the other apples on the tree. This sport was the origin of all the pippins in the world. Variations occur in the animal kingdom also. A farmer, living near Watertown, Massachusetts, noticed that one of his young lambs had very short legs. Even when full-grown, the animal, though strong and well-bodied, could not jump a fence that ordinary sheep could clear easily. The sheep's inability to break bounds was an advantage, and the farmer took good care that this woolly sport of nature should not fall into the hands of the butcher. Her lambs brought high prices for a few years, other sheep-raisers being anxious to have no troublesome fence- 128 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. jumpers. Now there are several varieties of sheep with short legs, all sprung from the famous Water- town animal. In fish-life, Nature determines whether or not a sport shall be the original of a new species. Suppose a slow-moving fish, shaped like the cod or the salmon, was forced, by some unusual defect in its structure, to swim and to lie on one side. This fish, having adapted itself to the variation from the ordinary position, would be in no wise disadvantaged by becoming lop-sided. As the fish increased in weight, it would gradually flatten in shape. We can watch this latter change in the fry hatched from the eggs of the flat fishes. The sole, for example, begins life as a round fish. After a time it adopts the lop-sided position for both resting and swimming. Then a curious illustration of nature's saving power may be seen. The under eye, being useless in its position, slowly moves round to the top ! The upper sur- face of the body grows darker from the action of the light on it, the under side retains its white color. Sometimes a flat fish cannot lie on either side, and then both sides are dark. The shade of the fish is the same as the color of the feeding-ground. If the sand is all of one color, there are no spots on the fishes. If there are pebbles strewn over SOME FISH SPORTS. 129 the shoal, spots, similar in color to them, will appear on the upper sides of the fish. Does the sole gain anything by its singular changes ? Yes, these are really so many modes of protection against enemies. The ocean is the scene of never-ending warfare. All the large 32fc members of the finny tribe prey on the smaller ones. Fish have been caught that had swallowed other fish, and still others were found inside the latter. The saving power of form and color, com- bined, is well shown in the flounder. The dark shade and flat shape of this fish enable it to escape the eyes of larger hungry fishes swimming above it. 130 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. Lesson XXXIX. Money from Water. The riches of the ocean are too great for com- putation. If the food-product of a given acreage of land should be compared with the food-product j^t^L' * JTH " '■" - — -* — * """^""^N, ***** IH^j^HKill i^^LJL^gBi| : WSSk^ssr- - — - SALMON A DAY OLD • " "" ; : ' • ' ' •,. ■■■-■-; \-£.di - !;: .:• :: " SALMONS EGC._ of an equal space of sea, the result would astonish most persons. The best fishing-grounds can pro- vide us with much more food than the best lands, like areas of each being tested. An acre of the Grand Bank off the Newfound- MONEY FROM WATER. 13 I land coast will yield more nutritious edible sub- stance in one week than an acre of the richest soil will produce in a year. Fifty acres of land might yield 2,000 bushels of wheat annually. Five schooners, after only one night's fishing, brought into Gloucester, Massa- chusetts, twenty-one tons of fish. The nets, it was afterwards proved, had swept about fifty acres of water. Nature makes us a free gift of her ocean treas- ures. Fruits and grains have reached their pres- ent degree of excellence solely through careful and expensive culture, bestowed on them by man for centuries. Our seas and lakes and rivers afford us vast stores of food of a quality beyond our power to improve. The finest of food-fishes is the salmon. It leaves the ocean waters at certain seasons, and ascends to the upper courses of rivers to spawn. Its eggs will hatch out in fresh water only ; and, to place them beyond probable danger, the fish will swim against a strong current for a thousand miles, and leap up over falls five feet in height. After spawning, salmon are unfit for food, and are in such poor condition that numbers of them die on their way back to the sea. Salmon-spearing by torchlight is an exciting amusement. The fish, drawn by curiosity towards 132 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. the blaze, are suddenly transfixed by a fishing- spear (an instrument resembling a gigantic fork) thrown by the spearer. He usually stands in the bow of the boat. The Indians, having no spears, used bows and arrows. The salmon catch of the United States exceeds that of any other country. The smaller streams, flowing into the Pacific on our northwest coast, are at spawning time almost blocked with shoals of salmon. 60,000,000 pounds of this fish are exported annually to various parts of the world. The process of preserving meat by canning makes it possible to place fresh salmon from the Colum- bia River on a breakfast table in any portion of the earth. The business of salmon-packing has now grown to be the largest industry, except wheat -raising, in our great Northwest. On the Columbia River, between the Cascades and Cape Disappointment, there are forty-five canning establishments and more than twenty fishing stations. Most of the in-door work is done by Chinamen. The king salmon, the largest and finest in the world, is caught in Alaskan waters. The more northern the stream in which the fish are taken, the better is their flavor. When Russia owned the territory of Alaska, the territorial officials esteemed the Yukon salmon so highly that several AN AMERICAN FAVORITE. 1 33 hogsheads of this fish were salted yearly, and sent by the Alaskan governor as a present to the Czar. The king salmon often attains a weight of ioo pounds — a weight making it the king of its species indeed. Lesson XL. An American Favorite. The ancient Jewish law forbids the eating of those creatures that have neither fin nor scale, declaring them to be "unclean." A fierce con- troversy once arose among learned men on the question whether or not this prohibition extended to oysters. It was settled by the triumphant question : " What are the oyster's shells, but its scales ? " As the side questioned could not answer this query in a satisfactory manner, the oyster, the one most interested in the debate, has ever since had the privilege of being eaten with lemon-juice and without argument. There could never have arisen any doubt, as to whether oysters are healthful food, had the Ameri- can species been known in Palestine. All gour- mands consider our oysters the choicest to be obtained anywhere. 134 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. The oyster is the only animal substance which we eat habitually and by choice in the raw state. It is interesting to know that there is a hygienic reason for this preference. The large dark mass, which makes up the best part of the bivalve, is its liver. This contains two materials that are mixed together by simply eating the oyster. These materials then digest the liver without any help from the action of the stomach. But this advan- tage is lost, if the oyster is cooked. It must in that case be digested, like any other food, by the eater's own digestive powers. The production of oysters is steadily on the AN AMERICAN FAVORITE. 1 35 increase. New oyster farms, planted with the most desirable seed-oysters, are being constantly laid out along the Atlantic coast. The seaboards of South Carolina, Georgia, and Texas abound in oysters. In some places they are built up into reefs twenty miles in length. The waters of the Pacific coast do not seem to contain the food needed for the successful cultiva- tion of this favorite mollusk. California oysters are small and of coppery taste, like those on Palestine's seaboard and other Mediterranean beaches. The bays indenting the shores of Washington furnish oysters of a little better quality. Portland, Oregon, exports about 60,000 barrels of oysters a year. The Chinese boil their oysters, and then dry them in the sun. A green variety of the bivalve is much prized in France, and the artificial green- ing of oysters is carried on extensively along the banks of the Seudre River. The peculiar color and flavor are believed by the French to be im- parted by certain minute plants, which grow in the beds where the oysters are planted. Salted oysters are eaten in Mexico. The Connecticut Indian tribes depended much on the Long Island Sound oyster-beds for food. The white settlers* imitated the Indians in this particular. There are several tracts of the Sound shore, miles in length each, which are covered four 136 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. or five feet deep with shells, left by many genera- tions of oyster epicures. A large trade is done in opened oysters. The cities of Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, New Haven, and Providence send tubs of oyster-meats to various points in the interior. Cultivation has largely increased the supply of fine oysters. In New Haven twenty years -ago it, was difficult to secure ten bushels at short notice. Now a thou- sand bushels can be obtained in a few hours. One reason for the fine flavor of the Long Island Sound oysters is the nearness of their beds to fresh water, numerous rivers flowing into the Sound. Oyster dredging is a laborious occupation. The dredge is made of iron rings, and is shaped some- what like a trawl. The beds, or farms, in shallow water, are fished with a hand tool fashioned like a scoop. American oysters are sought after in the most distant markets, and are sent in immense quantities to all parts of our own continent, to Europe, and to portions of Asia. Staten Island oysters form one of Constantinople's staple imports. Stringent laws regulate the oyster industry in all the North Atlantic States. No oysters may be taken from the water during spawning time, the summer months. The yearly product of the American oyster business is valued at $25,000,000. FINNY MILLIONNAIRES. 1 37 Lesson XLI. Finny Millionnaires. The variety in the shape of fish eggs and the extent of their production are greater than is gen- erally known. The ova of various fishes differ remarkably in outward appearance. A herring egg is about the size of a grain of sago. The egg of the dogfish is as large as that of the pigeon. Indeed, dogfish eggs are eaten in Sweden when eggs of the feathered creation are scarce. A mass of fish-spawn is called a roe. A famous English zoologist, Buckland, some years ago ex- amined a cod-roe with a microscope. He found that there were 140 eggs, on the average, in a grain, making 67,200 eggs to the ounce. As the roe weighed 7^ pounds, it contained 7,526,400 eggs ! Cod-roe is canned, like salmon meat, or smoked to fit it for export. It is an agreeable dish when slightly salted, parboiled, and fried. Fish excel all other animals in prolific power. Even a small codfish will produce 2,000,000 eggs yearly ; and it is said that a single pair of herrings and their progeny, allowed to multiply for twenty years without interference, would supply the whole world with abundance of food. 138 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. The average number of ova in a salmon is twelve thousand. If all these eggs hatched out and the fry reached maturity, there would be twelve thousand salmon, whose produce, at the same rate, would be in the next season, 144,000,- "TT ■ \ ■ '...--*a-'-., — .^^e?g|l|jjg^ - j^.' 5 — -■— =- - ■ . — ;!,; y -- ; --^%\^Hil s - i "-" :j * --=^3=^. . . '^■■l*^ ttL " *" tff H^t- 1 ; $MHft'^B& 1 ^;ta?w\ arcs SS^^3»J'. r !jH/ L$ m ffiL ^ sweet pears. These were of the variety called " Golden Ball." A curious fact respecting pears is that, while twin apples — two apples united, side by side — are very common, twin pears are unknown. Yet pears often present odd and curious forms which show to the botanist that the origin of the fruit is the same as that of the apple. In each fruit, the end of the flower-stalk adheres to the five ovaries, and gradually fuses with them. It is also curious to note that wild pear-trees are covered with GUESTS FROM ASIA. 1 83 thorns, while the cultivated trees are free from them. At the great battle of Agincourt, fought between the French and the English, in the year 141 5, in France, a company of yeomen from Worcestershire had on their banner the device of a pear-tree laden with fruit. This circumstance shows that pear- culture must have been established in England long before 141 5. The cultivated varieties of the pear number over a thousand. Belgium excels every other country in the production of new kinds of pears. But the island of Jersey grows the most marvellous pears that the world has yet seen. These are sold'in London at the fabulous price of fifteen guineas a dozen — seventy-eight dollars for twelve pears ! But to get these monsters of the fruit kingdom, hundreds of other pears have to be nipped in the bud. The trees are allowed to bear only a few fruits each, and the branches on which these hang are kept as low down as possible. ' Pears, like apples, come to perfection in a dry, rich soil only. If the land is clayey, wet, and cold, it is hopeless to expect fruit of the first quality. If, at any time when pears are ripe, you want to pick one for eat- ing, and you are desirous of having it of good flavor, watch the movements of those excellent judges, the wasps, and follow their lead in your choice. 1 84 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. A near relative of the apple and the pear is the quince. It is a garden product of ancient fame, as might be supposed — the fruit is so attractive in appearance when fully ripe. The quince is another gift from that land of romance, Persia, to the lands of science in Europe and America. There is good reason for believing that the ancient Hebrews were acquainted with the quince, and it was, beyond all doubt, a favorite with the Greeks and the Romans. The tree bearing this celebrated fruit grows to the height of fifteen or twenty feet. The branches, always numerous, are crooked and distorted ; the leaves are dusky green above and downy on the under surface. The flowers resemble, in shape, apple blossoms, but are larger and more open, and white or pale pink in color. The aspect of the tree when in full bloom is very pleasing. A horizontal section of the quince shows a core of five large cells. Each one contains a quantity of a kind of mucilage enclosing several seeds. Thus the core of a quince can be told immediately from an apple core or a pear core, no cell of either pear or apple ever having more than two seeds. The flavor of the quince is somewhat bitter, and the fruit is not suitable for dessert. Quinces grown in hot countries have a blander taste than those produced here. But, wherever ripened, this GUESTS FROM ASIA. 185 fruit has a certain dainty roughness combined with a strong but delightful aroma. The quince has been used two thousand years for marmalade. To make this conserve, the Romans boiled quinces with honey. A distant ancestor of both the pear and the apple is the pretty little fruit called the crab-apple, or the Siberian crab. It is about the size of a large cherry, and is borne on a stalk quite as long and slender as that of a cherry, but grows generally in clusters of three to seven fruits. It is only lately that this little apple has become a recognized garden fruit. In flavor, the Siberian crab is far in advance of the wild apple, being sharp-tasted perhaps, but yet palatable and inviting, and, when preserved, always a welcome visitor to the table. The crab-apple tree is small-sized. Its leaves resemble plum leaves. The flowers are white, and come out in great profusion in early summer. As is implied in the fruit's full name, the crab-apple's native country is Siberia. 1 86 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. Lesson LIII. Stone Fruits. The most remarkable of all the forty classes into which fruits in general are divided is the stone-fruit class, of which the plum and the cherry are examples. These fruits present the utmost simplicity of structure. A stone-fruit is the bota- nist's ideal. Every fruit, when perfect, consists of three distinct layers — an outer skin, the pulp, and a hard substance. In the great majority of fruits, all three parts are not fully developed, and all there is to represent them is an envelope — such an envelope as we find in the shell of the nut, in the pod of the pea, and in the round little bag which holds the juice of the grape. In the stone-fruits the three layers are found complete. Again, a leaf folded lengthwise, the edges unit- ing to make a little box in which the seeds are contained, is the ideally simplest form of a fruit. Leaves thus changed are termed " carpels," and a fruit consisting of only one carpel, as the plum, is of course the simplest in structure. The five seed-chambers of the apple, constituting the core, are made by the combining of five carpels ; a pod, like that of the bean, is fashioned from one carpel. STONE FRUITS. 1 87 The groove on a stone-fruit indicates the line of junction of the leaf's edges. Altogether, there are about one hundred stone- fruits. Their flowers are white or roseate, and have five free petals. The kernels, and often the leaves, are noted for containing traces of that deadly poison, prussic acid. No one should ever eat a peach kernel. Many persons consider the plum the most deli- cious of all fruits. When the improvement of this fruit from the wild sloe began, it is impossible to determine. The damson variety was known to the ancient Greeks, and came to them from the famous Syrian city of Damascus. Modern France developed the green-gage. French plums, dried, are imported under the name of prunes. They are prepared by simply drying them in the sun. California prunes are driving all others from bur markets. A six-year old plum-tree near Visalia, California, yielded, in 1890, fruit enough to make eleven boxes of .prunes, each box containing one hundred pounds. In the same year, the product of a California plum-orchard of only one acre brought the owner #1,900. The prunes are superior in flavor to the French ones. Still another present from Persia is that fruit so beloved of birds and school-children, the cherry. There is no evidence to show when the wild 188 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. cherry first became an object of the gardener's care. Cherry-stones have been found in the lake- dwellings of Switzerland. The Romans had eight varieties of the cherry. That it was first brought to Italy from Cerasus, a story repeated so often, is not true. The Cerasus cherry was merely a new kind, though it has given its name to the whole class. In the valley of the Rhine, when the cherry crop is ripe, all the schools close for a fort- night, and children and parents set to work to gather in this luscious harvest of the trees. The Emperor Claudius, moved by curiosity, once sent couriers to Persia for some specimens of a strange fruit, reputed to grow in that far-off land. This fruit was found to be about the size of a small apple, and had a downy skin, part red and part yellow. In the centre was a large, hard kernel. Latin-speaking nations called the fruit malum Persicum — that is, the Persian apple. After a time, the first word, malum, was dropped, the proper adjective being used .as the name of the fruit. By slow degrees, the word Persicum was altered to persica, persca, pesca, pescha, pesche, peche, and peach. The original home of the peach is China. The date of the introduction of the fruit, as an object of culture, into Western Europe, is un- known. At an early period, peach-orchards were PRODUCTS OF THE VINE. 1 89 to be found in Southern France. Nowadays, the United States produces more peaches than all the rest of the world. The French claim, however, that their peaches surpass ours in quality. The two small States of Delaware and New Jersey have peach-orchards covering over fifty thousand acres, and containing, at the lowest esti- mate, five million trees. Special fast-freight trains are run, in the peach-harvesting season, to convey the fruit to all the large cities. The prodigious peach yield of the Atlantic seaboard will soon be exceeded by the rapidly increasing product of the peach-orchards of California. In that great fruit- growing State, preserve factories are already can- ning peaches of a quality superior to the best ones grown in France. Lesson LIV. Products of the Vine. The most ancient of cultivated fruits is the grape. Its history is lost in the remotest anti- quity. Ancient Egyptian monuments contain rep- resentations of various circumstances connected with the culture of the vine. It is probable that we must credit Persia with the original production 190 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. of the grape, — a fruit that all the world enjoys eating. The vine can live to a great age. In bulk it is sometimes enormous. In 1875 there was cut down at Montecito, California, a vine which meas- ured around the trunk, at a foot from the ground, fifty-five inches. The branches covered over four thousand square yards. The yearly produce of grapes varied from five to six tons. The trunk of this vine, which was the largest ever known, is still to be seen in a museum in San Francisco. The plan, now universal, of hastening the pro- duction of grapes by means of artificial heat, dates from 1705. The first experiment was made in England by burning wood-fires at the back of a wall having grape-vines trailed on the front. Protecting the vines with glass was a later idea. Cold countries can now, by using this forcing process, raise grapes even in winter. It is not generally known, but yet it is none the less one of the curiosities of modern commerce, that foggy England, and not Italy or Spain, supplies Copen- hagen and St. Petersburg with grapes. They are grown in great vineries near the town of Goole. This fact contains a lesson of deep significance for energetic American boys. The size of the bunches produced in English hot-houses is sometimes extraordinary. At the last International Fruit Exhibition, there was PRODUCTS OF THE VINE. I 9 I shown a cluster of Hamburg grapes, the weight of which was thirteen pounds and four ounces. While the vine needs heat, it nevertheless refuses to grow within twenty degrees of the equator ; and of course it will not flourish in any country where the summer is too short to allow the grapes to ripen. Wherever the fruit can be dried in the sun, certain kinds of grapes can be converted into raisins. The process is exceedingly ancient, sev- eral references to raisins being made in the his- torical books of the Old Testament. There are but few localities in which raisins can be cured successfully. For perfect results, the grapes must 192 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. be dried in the open air, in contact with a warm soil, and in an atmosphere free from dampness and hot with sunshine. These requisites are found in the district around Malaga, Spain, and in Southern California. The bunches of grapes are cut, placed in shallow trays, and exposed to the sun's beams for about a fort- night. Near the town of Huasco, in Chili, there is a little valley wherein many tons of first-grade raisins are annually prepared. These Chilian raisins have seeds so small as to be hardly notice- able. Excellent raisins also are those exported from Northern Persia and Bokhara. Sultana raisins are entirely seedless. They come from Smyrna. There seems to be no essential differ- ence between the vine which yields these grapes and the ordinary vine. The special character of seedlessness may have been produced by exceptional circumstances of soil and climate, leading to partly abortive flowers. The Sultana vines are planted in rows, seven feet apart, and are so trained as to form irregularly branching bushes. These seldom grow higher than three feet. The bunches are dipped into a solution of potash to which a small quantity of oil has been added. They are then dried on the ground for a week. After drying, the berries are stripped from the stalks and picked for export. PRODUCTS OF THE VINE. 193 About 10,000 tons of raisins are annually brought into this country. Another variety of the vine furnishes the valu- able fruit so familiar, in its dried state, under the name of currants. They were originally called " Corinth grapes," and the word " currant " is a cor- ruption of Corinth. The geographical range of their successful culture is quite limited. The native country of the currant, Greece, still pro- duces the largest quantity of the fruit, though, to- day, Corinth exports none. The currant-producing district is a narrow belt of land near the sea. The bunches are put in wooden trays, six feet by three, and just deep enough to hold a single layer. When the grapes are dry, the stalks are winnowed out, and the fruit is trodden into bar- rels for shipment. The smallness and seedless- ness of this variety of grape must have originated in some local conditions which led to the failure of perfect seeds. Even now, occasionally, seeds are found in individual berries. Currant culture was tried in Italy a few years ago, and was a failure ; because, after the third season, all the berries came as well charged with seeds as the larger varieties of grapes. Over $6,000,000 worth of raisins and currants are imported yearly into the United States. Yet the raisin pack of Cali- fornia for 1890 was 1,300,000 boxes. 194 FOODS AND BEVERAGES. Lesson LV. Globes without Maps. Our garden currants received their name from their resemblance to the Corinth grapes described in the last lesson. Currants, white, black, and red, are extremely young in years, compared with their illustrious relative, the grape. The common red currant grows wild throughout Central and North- ern Europe and Siberia, and is met with in North America nearly up to the Arctic Circle. It is needless to speak of this fruit's value for preserve and jelly. The jelly is the best of all fruit-juice conserves. Black-currant jam is considered supe- rior to any other. The gooseberry is an emigrant from the Hima- laya Mountains. It is not a sun-seeker ; hence in Southern Europe the berries are small and tasteless. A humid climate is preferred by this fruit, and it reaches its best condition in England. The bushes grow most luxuriantly when trained on trellises. Like the apple and the pear, the humble goose- berry often takes a fancy to send out a sport. Yet only four kinds, the red, yellow, white, and green, have hitherto proved fit for the table. Groisc-h