A Monsieur Millon was deputed to examine some samples of wheat—specimens of the principal varieties cultivated in the environs of Algiers. Amongst them was one remarkable for the size of the grain. It was a soft, white wheat, of the most beautiful appearance, which was found, nevertheless, to be entirely devoid of gluten. Repeated experiments with it, conducted with the utmost care, led always to the same result. The paste made with it broke and crumbled (so that it could by no means be converted into bread); and when it was placed on a sieve, and subjected to the action of water poured on it in a small stream, instead of gluten, it left only a dry, brittle substance, in the proportion of two or three per cent.
Led by this circumstance to inspect the wheat with renewed and close attention, Monsieur Millon discovered that the sample consisted of two distinct forms of grain, a small number of which were transparent on the surface, and proved half hard when broken; from these gluten, to the amount of from ten to twelve per cent. was easily obtained; but, on the contrary, the whitest and most feculent of the grains, which constituted the main part of the sample, were proved to contain not the slightest trace of gluten.
During two years in succession, the wheat of Guyotville presented the same peculiarity, proving that flour of the best appearance, and free from
adulteration, may be deficient in the proportion of gluten which is generally supposed to exist in all wheaten flour in its natural state.
The above-mentioned particulars were communicated by Monsieur Millon to the public in 1852; and in the notice of a pamphlet published by him in 1856 (Journal des Débats, July 30th), he is cited as strongly recommending the more general consumption of hard wheat, which contains a far larger amount of gluten, and is therefore more nutritious than the white; though the bread made from it is somewhat inferior in appearance. At the present moment, when much anxiety on the subject of food naturally exists in France, all prejudices or abuses which tend to maintain its oppressive price deserve serious consideration; and as some of them are common with us, it may not be out of place to give them a few words of notice here. “If we overcome a senseless prejudice, and adopt for consumption the hard-grained wheats, let us go a step further, and renounce the deplorable and ruinous custom of having thirty-five per cent. deducted by bolting* from the flour destined to the population of Paris, instead of confining it to twenty-five per cent., which would
render the bread made with it less white, but of better flavour, and more nourishing: we should thus preserve ten additional pounds of wholesome food in every hundred.” The more general use of rice* and maize is also strongly recommended. The latter is both cultivated and much eaten in the South of France, but is almost unknown in the North. One other passage from the article already quoted deserves attention; for though not strictly appertaining to the subject of “gluten,” it bears indirectly on that of bread. “Most important results may be anticipated from the improvement of our agriculture; for the soil of France is far from yielding all that it might be made to produce of the cereal grains; and without allotting to their cultivation a larger area than they have hitherto occupied, with the aid of time—which is indispensable to all progress in this world—we may obtain an increase of perhaps one-half more of corn of every kind, and especially of wheat. The average produce of a hundred acres of land is in England the double of what it is in France;
yet, in natural fertility, the soil of the British Islands is not half equal to our own; and the climate of England is far less favourable than ours. The difference arises solely from the English being better cultivators than we are.
“Our agriculture, and consequently our cereal products, would derive infinite advantage from the free admission into the French territory of all the improved implements and machines with which foreigners could supply us. . . . Much has been gained, it is true, by a reduction of the duty upon them to fifteen per cent.; but even with this reduction, the forms which have still to be observed render the existing difficulties in the way of the cultivators so excessive, that they shrink from encountering them. What they require is, to have, in lieu of all the elaborate formalities, which now consume so much precious time as to drive them to despair, simply and purely a fixed duty, regulated by the weight of the object on which it is levied, and which could be settled in an instant, until the time shall arrive (which cannot come too quickly) when all agricultural implements, with other instruments of industry, shall be altogether exempt from duty.”*
It is not gluten only which constitutes the nutritious properties of wheat, but the farina or starch also, which enters much more largely into its composition. A hundred pounds of the flour of good sound wheat contain from ten to twelve parts of gluten, and seventy of starch; and though the starch affords less nourishment than the gluten, it yields a very valuable amount of it.
By the following simple process, the two may be separated, and the precise nature of each may be ascertained, by persons who have no knowledge of chemistry:—“Let a little good wheat flour be made into a paste with a little water; let the paste be worked up in one’s closed hand under water, and let the water be frequently changed so long as it continues to be whitened by the flour. The portion which remains in the hand will now be found very different from the original flour. It will be a tasteless, fibrous, tenacious, tough, elastic, gray mass, stretching, when drawn out, to a great extent, and collapsing again like India rubber. It dries into a brown, hard, semi-transparent mass, which is brittle, and breaks with a glassy fracture. This is the gluten, which derives its name from its glutinous quality; and this it possesses to such an extent, that it acts as a cement for broken glass and porcelain. It is scarcely, if at all, soluble in water; but it dissolves readily in acids. It is asserted by Taddei that gluten—and flour as containing it—possesses the important property of