MAIZE.
STRANGE is it that Literature should be in advance both of States- manship and Commerce to appretiate so practical a thing as the value of Maize to the dense populations of Western Europe ; but such is the fact. Commerce, indeed, must feel its way tentatively ; and mistakes in its processes, not corrected on the instant by philosophical analysis, retard its advance. It was several generations before Scotland learned the use of the potato. Statesmanship, however, ought to be before Literature in such a matter, because it ought to be equally broad and far-seeing in the scope of its view, and it is answerable for disasters unaverted or benefits unsecured : but since the want and the uses of maize have been known, our active Statesmanship has been Whig. To Literature then it remains to follow up among us Britons the functions of a Triptolemus or Mango Copac—to teach us the ele- ments of the art of sustenance. And capitally is the office per- formed by Thomas Carlyle in the current number of Fraser's Magazine. Thus sings the seer the destiny of "Indian Meal"— " For general attainability, there was no article of food ever comparable to it before: a grown man, in any part of Europe accessible by sea, can be supported on it, at this date, wholesomely, and, if we understood the business even agree- ably, at the rate of little more than a penny a day; which surely is Cheap enough. Neither, as the article is not grown at home, and can be procured only by com- merce, need political economists dread new 'Irish difficulties ' from the cheap- ness of it. Nor is there danger, for unlimited periods yet, of its becoming dearer: it grows in the warm latitudes of the earth profusely, with the whole impulse of the sun; can grow over huge tracts and continents lying vacant hitherto, fester- ing hitherto as pestiferous jungles' yielding only rattlesnakes and yellow-fever ;
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it s probable, if we were driven to it, the planet Earth, sown where fit with In- dian corn, might produce a million times as much food as it now does, or has ever done! To the disconsolate Malthusian this grain ought to be a sovereign comfort. In the single Valley of the Mississippi alone, were the rest of the earth all lying fallow, there could Indian corn enough be grown to support the whole posterity of Adam now alive; let the disconsolate Malthusian fling his geome- trical series' into the corner; assist wisely in the free-trade movement,' and dry sip his tears. For a thousand years or two there is decidedly no danger of our wanting food, if we do not want good sense and industry Brat. In a word, this invaluable foreign corn is not only calculated, as we said, to replace the defunct potato, but to surpass it a thousandfold in benefit for man: and if the death of the potato have been the means of awakening us to such an immeasurably supe- rior resource' we shall, in addition to our sorrowful Irish reasons, have many joy- ful English, European, American, and universal reasons, to thank Heaven that the potato has been so kind as die!"
But the sage does more : he explains the accidental circum- stance which has impeded the general use of maize in this country, and he points out the remedy— "All the Indian meal was found to have a bitter fusty taste in it; which, after multiplied experiments, was not eradicable by any cookery, though long continued
boiling in clear water did abate it considerably. * •
"ibis meal, of a beautiful golden colour, equably ground into fine bard powder, and without speck or admixture of any kind, seemed to the sight, to the feel, and the smell, faultless; only to the taste was there this ineradicable final bitterness, which in bad samples even made the throat smart; and, as the meal seemed otherwise tasteless, acquired for it from unpatriotic mockers among us, the name of soot and sawdust meal.' American friends at last informed us that the meal waefusty, spoiled ; that Indian meal, especially in warm weather, did not keep sweet above a few weeks;—that we ought to procure Indian corn, and have it ground ourselves. Indian corn was accordingly procnred, with difficulty, from the Eastern City regions; and with no better result, nay with a worse. How old the corn might be, we of course knew only by testimony not beyond suspicion; per- haps it was corn of the second year in bond; but at all events the meal of it too was bitter: and the new evil was added of an intolerable mixture of sand; which On reflection we discovered to proceed from the English millstones; the English millstones, too soft for this new substance, could not grind it, could only grind themselves and it and so produce a mixture of meal and sand. Soot-and-saw- dust meal with the addition of brayed flint: there was plainly no standing of
this. • "Well; three days ago I received, direct from the barn of an American friend, as it was stowed there last autumn, a small barrel of Indian corn in the natural state; large ears or cobs of the Indian corn, merely stript of its loose leaves. On each ear, which is of obelisk shape, about the size of a large thick truncated
Carrot, there are perhaps about five hundred grains, arranged in close order in their eight columns; the colour gold yellow' or in some cases with a flecker of blood-red. These grains need to be rubbed off, and ground by some rational mil- ler, whose millstones are hard enough for the work: that is all the secret of pre- paring them. And here comes the important point. This grain, I now for the first time find, is sweet, among the sweetest, with an excellent rich taste some- thing like that of nuts; indeed it seems to me, perhaps from novelty in part, de- cidedly sweeter than wheat, or any other grain I have ever tasted."
We understand that there is a further distinction between the species of meal, easily observable ; the Levantine maize being more subject to the bitterness than the American.
One negative advantage Mr. Carlyle overlooks, in the relation between wheat and maize. It seems to be pretty well ascertained that no article of food so well suits the English palate and sto- mach for its staple as the best white wheat—a highly digestible and nourishing article, neutral in taste and texture, excellently fitted to accompany almost any subsidiary meats sweet or salt. Maize, bitter or redundantly sweet, can never tale the place of our faithful wheat : it must therefore remain a secondary and. auxiliary article of food, the home-grown white wheat still being the stock of our "staff of life." Politically and socially there are great advantages in that relation between the domestic and the foreign grain. But maize may do all that wheat fails to do ; filling up the vast and innumerable gaps in the supply of that costly staple, and eking out its parsimony into the amplest abundance.
" These facts, in a time of potato failures, apprehension of want, and occasional fits of widespread too-authentic want and &mine, when M. Sayer has to set about concocting miraculously cheap soup, and the Government to make enormous grants and rates-in-aid, seem to me of a decidedly comfortable kind— well deserving practical investigation by the European Sayers, Governments, Poor- law Boards, Mendicity Societies, Friends of Distressed Needlewornen, and Friends of the Human Species, who are often sadly in alarm as to the 'food prospects,'— and who have here, if they will clear the entrance, a most extensive harbour of refuge."
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