The philosophy of eating. By Albert J. Bellows, M.D.

48 SOUTHERN FLOUR BETTER THAN NORTHERN.

wheat yielded as high as thirty-five per cent. of gluten.
In this country, also, a similar difference, but not so
great, has been observed between the nourishing
qualities of flour from southern and northern wheat.
Chemical analyses have not, so far as I know, been
made to determine the comparative amount of gluten
in southern and northern flour; but the comparison
is made by a different process, and the difference between flour from Georgia wheat and that raised in
Canada is at least twenty-five per cent.
The report of the Patent Office for 1848 states that
Alabama flour yielded twenty per cent. more bread
than flour from Cincinnati. Upon this principle the
quality of flour may be tested in a tube graduated like
a thermometer, only being large enough to hold an
appreciable amount of dry flour, which, on being wet,
will swell and rise in the tube in proportion to the
amount of gluten contained in the sample used; or the
experiment may be varied by noticing the degree of
expansion under regular increments of heat. Upon
the same principle housekeepers judge of the " strength"
of flour, which is only another term for expressing
the amount of gluten or strength-giving element, by
noticing the height to which a given quantity will rise
in a similar vessel in which it is being preparaed for
baking; and when we consider that flour with the
most gluten is not only twenty-five per cent. more
economical than flour with the minimum of that important element, but is also sweeter and more digestible in the same proportion, it becomes a matter of