A NEW CEREAL.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3627, 26 February 1883, Page 4

A NEW CEREAL.

Millomai/c is (says a San Francisco journal) tbc name given to a neAv cereal ■which has been introduced in South Carolina, It is found in Columbia, South America, and furnishes the main food of the people there. It also makes good fodder for stock. Tho cakes made from it arc described as better than corn cakes. The Savannah Guano Company's chemist pronounces it superior in i'ood qualities to wheat. It has been groivn experimentally in South Carolina for several years, prodiicin"- at the rate of from 50 to 100 bushels per acre. The Rev. 11. H. Pratt, the missionary Avho brought the plant from South America, gives those further particulars in regard to it:—" The plant is allied to the sorirlium aud Guinea corn families, and should not bo planted where there is any danirer of mixing them. The grain is .smaller and mealy than the Guinea com, the heads arc larger and more compact, and the color is milk Avhite instead of red. It differs from the sorghum in this, that the sugar it contains is fully converted into corn Avhen the grain matures —so that the pith of the green stalks becomes as dry and tasteless as'that of Indian corn Avhen the stall?: is dead. In Barranquilla, on the coast, where avc have a dry season (which is really a draught) of five or six months' continuance, I have had it planted iv my garden, and after it had ripened one crop of seed I have cut it down to the roots, in the midst of this dry season, and had a second crop, of inferior quality, of course, to shoot up at once from the roots. I have been told that a third crop of f idly ripened seed can thus be made from a single plant. I do not knoAv Avhat this can imply (for the soil at this season gets dry as a potsherd and nearly as hard), unless it means that above most other plants it lives off the atmosphere, Avhieh there certainly is densely charged with moisture from the sea. It Avas this unlimited capacity to stand drought Avhieh induced mc to bring the seed home, in the belief that it Avould be of iucalcidablc service to our Southern States, Avhen om- crops so often fail from drought.