Strong drink and tobacco smoke : the structure, growth, and uses of malt, hops, yeast, and tobacco / by Henry P. Prescott.

  • Prescott, Henry Paul, active 1868.
Date:
1869
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Strong drink and tobacco smoke : the structure, growth, and uses of malt, hops, yeast, and tobacco / by Henry P. Prescott. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    CHAPTER III. HOW BARLEY GROWS. Haying given a general outline of the composition of a plant, the reader will be prepared to understand the process of growth of a simple grain of barley. If a grain be taken, and the outer husk and inner skin are removed from the thick end of it' on its smoother or ungrooved surface a small conical body will be found lodged in the white mealy portion of the grain, and darker than it. This is the embryo of a young plant (Plate 2, fig. 1) awaiting some exciting cause to bring its latent powers into action. Place a few of these grains whole in moist earth for three or four days, and watch the result. On examining the grain at the end of that time, it will be found that, although in external appearance it only exhibits a swollen appearance, yet, on opening it, or tearing away the husk, its internal characters have very much changed. Instead of the white mealy mass, we have a pasty-looking substance, the embryo has elongated considerably (fig. 2), and a number of slender filaments c