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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    earth. Though by no means difficult to observe in what part of the seeds this vital activity commences, or to demonstrate, with the assistance of the microscope, that the seeds of barley, like the plants which they produce, are nothing more than a collection of minute cells, we are nevertheless, after doing so, but a little nearer to the solution of those mighty mysteries which are in- cluded in the word, Life, although we have arrived at a comprehension of some of those agencies which produce its earliest manifestation. This, though matter too deep for our philosophy, need not deter us from seeking the knowledge of other facts connected with the life of our barley plant, nor of studying some of the most beautiful provisions which Nature has made for the conservation and reproduction of a plant, that may be said to have become one of the staple necessities of society at the present time. A special interest attaches, too, to the hop plant, as the source from which are derived the bitter and aromatic qualities for which English beers are prized, as the finest in the world. The dried fruit of this plant yielded, until recently, an enormous revenue to Govern- ment. It is, however, peculiarly liable to the attacks of the “fly/5 or “blight,” and, on this account, it became so difficult to collect the hop duty, that it has been abandoned by the Government. Yeast, with which both our bread and our beers are fermented, takes its place in the vegetable kingdom as a plant very low in its organization, but nevertheless