The cereal grains consist of solidified vegetable milk, drawn from the bosom of Mother Earth. But two of them all are used for making light and spongy bread with yeast, and wheat has the universal preference because it contains all the elements necessary to the growth and sustenance of the body. It makes bread which is more inviting to the eye and more agreeable to the taste. It is the highest type of vegetable food known to mankind, and it is claimed that the most enlightened nations of modern times owe their mental and bodily superiority to this great and beneficent product. There is little if any difference in the nutriment or value of spring and winter wheat. Some prefer the one and some the other. Southern raised wheat is apt to be drier than northern and will better stand the effects of warm climates. Wheat varies in weight per bushel as the season is wet or dry. The best is round, plump and smooth. It contains about fifteen parts of water, sixty-five to seventy-five parts of starch, and about ten parts of gluten. The average annual production of wheat in the United States during the past eight years has been 448,815,699 bushels; an increase over the preceding ten years of forty-four per cent., while the increase of population has been only twenty-five per cent. Wheaten Flour. Wheat was formerly ground by mill stones, and the product bolted and sifted into the different grades. But during the last twelve years, this process has been largely superseded by the “Patent Roller” process of crushing and separating the flour from the bran. This is a great improvement over the old method; more flour is obtained from the wheat, and it is whiter, contains more gluten, and is therefore stronger. The first consideration is the color or whiteness; second, the quantity of gluten the flour contains. The eye determines the first, and a hasty test of the quantity and quality of the gluten may be made by squeezing some of the flour into a lump in the hand. This lump will more closely show the prints of the fingers, and will hold its form in handling with considerable more tenacity if the flour is good, than if it is inferior and deficient in gluten. Grocers and bakers test flour by smoothing a little out on a board with a knife or paper cutter, to see its color, and if it contains specks of bran, etc., which may show that it has not been well bolted or “dressed.” To determine the quantity and strength of the gluten, they mix some of the flour with water, and judge by the tenacity of the dough—the length to which it may be drawn out by the fingers, or spread into a thin sheet. Injury to flour is shown most quickly in the gluten, which may lose its vitality. The gluten of good flour will swell to several times its bulk under a gentle heat, and give off the pleasant odor of hot bread, while the gluten from poor flour swells but little, becomes viscous or nearly fluid, and smells disagreeably.