ciple called gluten, makes its general
use of very questionable propriety.

Indian meal alone, baked in cakes by the fire, if eaten only in small
quantities, is a very nutritious and by no means unwholesome bread. But
its sweetness, and the general fondness which people who are accustomed
to its use have for it, lead them to eat it in too large proportions, if
they use it while it is warm. In these circumstances, it proves itself
too active for the stomach and bowels. If warm, six ounces is as much
as a hearty adult ought to eat of it at once; and children should of
course take much less. It is less active on the bowels, and scarcely
less agreeable, as soon as we become accustomed to it, if eaten when it
is cold--even if baked in loaves, in the oven.

Potatoes, added to unbolted wheat flour, make excellent bread; and so,
as I am informed, does rice. Of the latter, however, I have never eaten.
Oats and barley, and many other grains and substances, will make bread;
but it is of an inferior kind.

The question may again recur, after this extended series of remarks,
whether I intend to confine the young almost exclusively to bread, in
one or another of its forms. We shall see how this is, presently.

While bread, therefore, should constitute a part, at least, and
sometimes the whole of a meal, a great variety of other articles are not
only admissible, but desirable. Among these may be mentioned plain
puddings.

One of the most wholesome puddings is made of Indian meal, enclosed in a
bag and boiled. Nearly allied to this is the common hasty pudding; but
the last is less wholesome, because it requires less chewing; and it
ought to have been observed, before now, that after weaning, any food
is digested better which has undergone the process of thorough
mastication.

Boiled rice, though hardly to be regarded as a pudding, is very
nutritious, and very easy of digestion. I am not without doubts,
however, in regard to the utility of a large proportion of rice, as
food. A dinner of it, two or three times a week, I believe to be
wholesome; but used too frequently, it seems to me not active enough for
the stomach and bowels; having in this respect precisely a contrary
effect to that of warm Indian cakes. The common notion that rice has a
tendency to make people blind, is entirely unfounded. Its worst effect
is when eaten without being boiled through. In such cases, I have known
it to do mischief; perhaps because it was swallo