CORIANDER-SEED

the smooth, round, yellowish or brownish, seed-like fruit— a little smaller than peppereorns—-borne by a small plant, native to the south of Fiurope and Asia Minor, now widely grown. It is used as a culinary flavor, especially for curries and pastries, and by Mexicans in soups and in the manufacture of confectionery. Simply sugar-coated (in white or other colors) the seeds constitute a popular Scotch candy. oo CORN. The title ‘‘corn’’ is used in a general way to designate all the principal grains—as wheat and rye—but specifically applied in this country it refers to ‘‘Indian corn,’’ or maize, the seed of the most beautiful and luxuriant of all grain gra es, and the most abundant in product. It is native to tropical America and was used as food by the Indians centuries before the era of Columbus, and probably by the civilization which antedated the Red Man. The plant is an annual, and under favorable conditions reaches a great height— some varieties exceeding fifteen feet. Its pollen is scattered from the panicle which forms its head and is caught by its ‘‘silk’’—the long, silky styles attached to the ovaries of the pistillate flowers which have developed on the (then) fleshy cob held in the axils of the side leaves of the stalk—the silk extending out from hetween the husks which sheathe the cob. The greater part of the corn grown in the United States is of the Dent variety, subdivided into innumerable types but capable of a general grouping into two cla es—yellow and white. In the northern states and Canada, the shorter season requires the planting of the more quickly maturing Flint variety, but this is of the same general character and is used in the same ways. The difference in appearance—the indented form of Dent grains and the smooth style of the Flints—is due to the different construction of the kernels. The horny layer, or hull, of Flint corn completely encloses its starchy endosperm. In the Dent the endosperm is exposed at the summit of the kernel, and produces the ‘‘dent’’ by shrinkage in drying. The ears of Flint corn are typically slender and long (up to fifteen or more inches in length), with grain-rows few in number (eight or so) and the grains themselves very broad. Dent ears are stouter, with sixteen to twenty-four grain-rows. They are in some special strains as long as the longest Flint, but they average considerably shorter. In the early days of the English colonies here, corn was not confined to yellow and white ears, with an occasional red variation, as to-day. Though yellow and white were even then the most common, they were interspersed with red, blue, olive, greenish, black, var i-colored, speckled, striped, ete.—a very showy mixture and blending of colors and tints! A group of such ears is shown on the color-page facing 151. Corn is lower in protein than wheat and oats, but is fully equal in that respect to other grains and it surpa es many in the proportion of fat or oil. It does not make as good loaf-bread as wheat beeause of its smaller proportion of gliadin, but otherwise its use as a food ranks very high in national importance. Its main food-component—starch—is of excellent quality. It is enjoyed in a great diversity of styles—coarse ground into hominy, cornmeal, ete., and boiled as hominy, mush, or ‘‘hasty-pudding,’? or baked in various: kinds of corn bread; converted into sirup; ground fine as cornstarch for puddings; eaten green—boiled with beans to make suecotash or ‘‘on the eob,’’ and canned for use when ‘‘green corn”? is unobtainable—and very often preferably when it is. As corn-sugar and corn-sirup it also enters bread and confectionery, and many other articles of our national bill of fare, and it yields both cooking and salad oils. It finds its place, too, in many other noted dishes—among them the Irish ‘‘stirabout,’’ the Italian polenta, and the Mexican tortilla and tamale. It is, further, the principal grain crop throughout South Africa—as ‘‘mealies’’ it is the natives’ staple food—and it covers you sands of acres in India and other parts of the world. The fear of pellagra as a result of corn eating may be entirely dismi ed. Pellagra is, largely, the penalty of an inadequately balanced diet—of a laek of a proper variety of food. It is not due to any toxic property of corn. The average annual crop in the United States is from two and a half to three billion bushels. This staggering total is variously utilized. Part of it is employed in the starch and brewery and other industries and part in the food products already mentioned, but a still greater quantity is transformed into meat—for eorn is our most important live-stock food, rounding out the steer and putting fat on the hog. Nor should one forget that the ripe grain consumed by eattle—and its chopped or shredded stalks, or ‘‘dry fodder’’—is supplemented hy a big acreage devoted to corn sown and grown for harvesting green as ensilage—the entire plants, with their ears just short of ripene , to be eut fine and stored in the tall, generally round, silos that are nowadays so noticeable a feature of farm buildings—there to undergo a mild fermentation (akin to that of the sauerkraut of the human diet), and to be fed as a much-liked, sueculent ration particularly valuable when gra is scanty or its season past. The grain may be divided into the germ (the oily part), the endosperm (the body of the kernel, consisting principally of starch, together with some gluten), and the hull, or ‘‘bran.”’ The germs are used in the manufacture of corn oil. The starch provides all the other edible manufactured products and numerous industrial products, especially laundry starches and dextrin—the latter sabstituting for gum arabic and extensively used in the textile trades. Dextrin is also the adhesive which affixes the postage stamp to your letter! The bran. mixed with the gluten separated from the starch, is used as cattle-food. Of corns other than Dent and Flint the best known commercially are Sweet Corn —grown principally for canning and for green corn ‘‘on the cob,’? and Poprcory (which see). Sweet corn is distinguished by its crinkled, semi-transparent appearance when dry. When ent for green corn, the kernels should be plump and well filled, but soft and milky. It should always be consumed as soon as po ible after picking as it deteriorates rapidly in holding. The husks should be bright and fresh looking.; ' “a an ~ i VAN iNav