are the conditions which cause the change of the non-nitrogenous principles into acids (the lactic or acetic), while a portion of the gluten is thus also consumed.

I have tried a series of experiments in reference to the action of moisture upon various samples of wheat and wheat flour.  The samples were placed for twelve hours in the oven of a bath with a double casing, containing a boiling saturated solution of common salt, the temperature of which was about 220 deg.  Fahr.  Subjected to this test,

100 grains of Milwaukie wheat lost                 12.10 grains.
"    "       Guilderland (Holland) wheat lost      9.35     "
"    "       Polish Odessa red wheat      "       10.55     "
"    "       Soft Russian wheat           "        8.55     "
"    "       Kobanga wheat                "        8.15     "

    After an exposure of the dried samples to the air for two or three
    days, they increased in weight from one to three grains in the
    hundred originally employed.

Nineteen different samples of wheat flour, which lost by exposure to the above heat from ten to fourteen grains in the one hundred, when similarly exposed to the air for eighteen hours, again increased in weight from 8.40 to 11.60 in the hundred grains originally employed.

These experiments show, what might indeed have been predicted as to the general result, that wheat in grain, if not less liable to injury than flour, yet if once properly dried, suffers much less from a subsequent exposure to air and moisture.

It is now ascertained that in presence of a considerable proportion of water, wheat flour under the influence of heat undergoes a low degree at least of lactic fermentation, which will account for the souring of the ordinary samples when exposed to warm or humid climates.  The same result will inevitably follow from their careless exposure in the holds of vessels.  That this is particularly the case with many of the cargoes of wheat flour shipped to Great Britain, there is little reason to doubt.  This may be partly owing to the great humidity of the English climate, as the deterioration is observed as well in the flour which is the produce of that country as in that which is received from abroad.

It is stated by Mr. Edlin, quoted in an article on Baking, in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, that, “as a general rule, the London flour” is decidedly bad.  The gluten generally wants the adhesiveness which characterizes the gluten of good wheat.”

I have observed that, in the analyses of some of the samples of damaged flour, the proportions of what is set down under the head of glucose and dextrine are unusually large.  This is perhaps due to the change produced in the starch by the action of diastase, and which may under certain circumstances be formed in wheat flour.  It would seem, according to M. Guerin, that starch may thus