Rensselaer Standard, Volume 1, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 December 1879 — A New Cereal. [ARTICLE]

A New Cereal.

k * former citizen or i^nioago, toi^Jd 6 mid* hlv^g procured several quarts of the seed, with an ordinary seed-planter he. deposited two or tn ree grains a foot or two apart in the sod. There had not been a drop of rain for the previous eight months, and it did not rain for five weeks after the planting; yet the seed germinated. Tne corn came up and grew finely. After it got fairly started, the hot blasts came up from the Plano Eetaeado (Staked Plains), burning up the grass and every green thing in the gardens, scorching like the blast from a furnace, and yet It did not affect the neW-ocmer from Egypt a particle. It grew right along In spite of the heat. Then the rains came on and the sturdy grain was equally indifferent to that. It grew right on and ripened about the Ist of September, yielding, Deacon Hollister thought, some sixty bushels to the acre, weighing sixty pounds to the bushel. The stalk for some three feet from the ground is about as large as a man’s coat sleeve, and is a perfect wood. This in all the treeless regions east of the mountains ia a most important fact, as an acre or two will furnish fiiel for a family for_an entire year. From the top of the woody substance issues a stalk, on the top of which a tuft something like that of sorghum issues; this soon droops over, ana the whole buneh is one moss of the grain. The kernel is about the size of a grain of wheat, perhaps a little smaller and more nearly round. Each one is inclosed in a shuck or independent capsule. The graiu can be ground into an excellent flour, from which bread and other food can be made; it can be boiled or eaten as rice or cracked wheat, and in fact can be used' for any purpose for which our ordinary cereals are employed. A neighbor of Deacon Hollister, who raised a small crop last year assured him that it fattened his pigs faster than lie had ever known common oorn or any other feed to do it.