the cakes should be made. Gather all the scraps together, put
them into a basin with the flour, and rub them well together. Add the
currants, sugar, candied peel, cut into thin slices, and the ground
allspice. When all these ingredients are well mixed, moisten with
sufficient cold water to make the whole into a nice paste; roll it out
thin, cut it into shapes, and bake the cakes in a quick oven from 15 to
20 minutes. These are very economical and wholesome cakes for children,
and the lard, melted at home, produced from the flead, is generally
better than that you purchase. To prevent the lard from burning, and to
insure its being a good colour, it is better to melt it in a jar placed
in a saucepan of boiling water; by doing it in this manner, there will
be no chance of its discolouring.

_Time_.--15 to 20 minutes.

_Sufficient_ to make 3 or 4 dozen cakes.

_Seasonable_ from September to March.

[Illustration: WHEAT.]

Wheat is liable to several diseases, which affect the flour made
from it, and render it unfit for good bread. The principal of
these are the blight, mildew, and smut, which are occasioned by
microscopic fungi, which sow themselves and grow upon the stems
and ears, destroying the nutritive principles, and introducing
matter of a deleterious kind. The farmer is at the utmost pains
to keep away these intruders. Wheat, as well as all kinds of
corn, is also very liable to be injured by being stacked before
it is quite dry; in which case it will heat, and become musty in
the ricks. In wet harvests it is sometimes impossible to get it
sufficiently dried, and a great deal of corn is thus often
spoiled. It is generally reckoned that the sweetest bread is
made from wheat threshed out before it is stacked; which shows
the importance of studying the best modes of preserving it.

The erudite are not agreed as to the aboriginal country of corn:
some say it is Egypt, others Tartary; and the learned Bailly, as
well as the traveller Pallas, affirms that it grows
spontaneously in Siberia. Be that as it may, the Phocians
brought it to Marseilles before the Romans had penetrated into
Gaul. The Gauls ate the corn cooked or bruised in a mortar: they
did not know, for a long time, how to make fermented bread.

SCOTCH SHORTBREAD.

1780. INGREDIENTS.--2 lbs. of flour, 1 lb. of butter, 1/4 lb. of pounded
loaf sugar, 1/2 oz. of caraway seed