statesmen, and our literati, been unconsciously employed, under an over-ruling Providence, as so many pioneers, to prepare the way for our Swartzes, our Buchanans, our Martins, and our Careys."--_Duff's India and India Missions._ [E] The relative proportions of starch and gluten in rice, wheat, and other seeds, not only confirm the views respecting design, in determining their geographical distribution, but merit notice, as influencing their nutritive qualities, and fitness or unfitness as food in different countries. -----------------------------+---------+-------- | Starch. | Gluten. +---------+-------- Wheat, according to Proust | 74.5 | 12.5 ---- -- Vogel | 68.0 | 24.0 Winter wheat -- Davy | 77.0 | 19.0 Spring wheat | 70.0 | 24.0 Spelt -- Vogel | 74.0 | 22.0 Barley -- Davy | 79.0 | 6.0 Rye -- Do. | 61.0 | 5.0 Oats -- Do. | 59.0 | 6.0 Rice Carolina -- Vogel | 85.07 | 3.60 Maize -- Bizio | 80.92 | 0. Tartarian buckwheat | 52.29 | 10.47 -----------------------------+---------+-------- Not only do the relative proportions of starch and gluten vary in the same seed when grown in different countries, but even when grown in the same country, according to the kind of manure put on the soil, a point of great importance to agriculturists, when known and attended to. [F] See "Church of England Magazine," vol. vii. p. 52-3-4. [G] "I have been informed by Sir Joseph Banks, that the Derbyshire miners, in winter, prefer oat-cakes to wheaten bread, finding that this kind of nourishment enables them to support their strength and perform their labour better. In summer they say oat-cake heats them, and they then consume the finest wheaten bread they can procure."--_Sir H. Dacy's Agricultural Chemistry, 5th edit., p. 143._ The propriety and advantage of this practice is established by the recent investigations of Boussingault, who found that oats contain more than double the quantity of nitrogen which exists in any of the other cereal grains.--_See Annales de Chimie et de Physique, tom. lxvii. p. 408-21._ [H] Carpenter's "General and Comparative Physiology," p. 272 and Dr. Prout's "Bridgewater Treatise," book iii. [I] See Forrest's "Voyage to the Moluccas;" Craufurd's "Indian Archipelago, or Library of Entertaining Knowledge, Vegetable Substances, Food of Man," p. 171.