_Oats_ occupied an honourable place after barley. Pliny fancied these two plants so analogous, that the owner of a field who had sown barley might find oats at the time of harvest, whilst precisely the reverse might happen to his neighbour.[V-16] Nature, in our days, is not subject to such frolics; and our farmers are tolerably certain that, by care, labour, and God’s assistance, they will gather from the soil what they have sown. “In order to develop a strong flavour of vanille in black oats, wash this seed, boil it a moment in water, and employ the decoction as you would potato flour, and it will form excellent creams. “In Normandy and Lower Britany they make with flour of oats a delicious soup. The following is the manner they obtain it. They take white oats and put them in the oven; when sufficiently dried, they are fanned, cleaned, and carried to a mill, the grinders of which are freshly sharpened. The miller takes care to hold them a little way off, in order that they may not crush the grain, and that this last may preserve the shape of rice; by this means they remove the whole of the pellicle.”--PARMENTIER. The Greeks and Romans knew how to appreciate oatmeal:[V-17] they used it to make a kind of gruel, such as we have already described, and also a substantial thick milk, which they prepared as we do.[V-18] _Rice_ was also held in great esteem by them: they considered it as a food very beneficial to the chest; therefore it was recommended in cases of consumption, and to persons subject to spitting of blood.[V-19] _Millet_, so called from the multiplicity of its seeds,[V-20] abounded more particularly in Gaul, in the time of Strabo.[V-21] Pliny pretends that no grain swells so much in cooking, and he assures us that sixty pounds of bread was obtained from a single bushel of millet, weighing only twenty pounds.[V-22] This naturalist also speaks of another kind of millet, coming originally from India, and which had only been in cultivation ten years in Italy. The stalk resembled that of the reed, and often attained the height of ten feet; its fecundity was such that a single grain produced innumerable ears of corn;[V-23] therefore, if so prolific, and capable of making good and economical food, why should it not be, in 1858, cultivated largely wherever the climate may allow it?