A Bushel of Corn. By A. Stephen Wilson. (David Douglas,
Edinburgh.)—Mr. Wilson has here carefully collected a vast mass of facts relating to the weight of wheat, barley, and oats, as it varies in different seasons and in different kinds. Much, indeed most, of the volume, is occupied by details of a highly technical character, but there are some things in it that stand so prominently forward that the uninitiated reader can lay bold of and appreciate them. One is that corn is much more accurately appreciated by weight than by measure, and, as an inference, that our own statistics of the corn market are misleading. One quarter of wheat may differ from another by as much as 88 lb. ; in barley this difference rises to as much as a hundredweight, and in oats eight pounds still higher. These, as Mr. Wilson says, are of course extreme instances, but the commonly occurring difference is very great. A curious instance of the practical bearing of this difference is given in a note at the end of the volume, explanatory of a photographic illustration which exhibits two kinds of oats (the Canadian and the Tartarian), lying in their ordinary state of compactness in boxes with glass fronts. The two kinds have a specific gravity about equal, but, from the fact that the shape of the Canadian oats favours compact lying, while that of Tartarian as distinctly disfavours it, the weight of a bushel of the former is 50 lb., of a bushel of the latter 38 lb. It is not every one that keeps horses who knows this.
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