But they answered, the next day, that they
had already received directly the same matter;--yet have not up
to this time returned my book. For the Indian corn,--I have been
to see Dr. Charles T. Jackson (my wife's brother, and our best
chemist, inventor of etherization), who tells me that the reason
your meal is bitter is, that all the corn sent to you from us is
kiln-dried here, usually at a heat of three hundred degrees,
which effectually kills the starch or diastase (?) which would
otherwise become sugar. This drying is thought necessary to
prevent the corn from becoming musty in the contingency of a long
voyage. He says, if it should go in the steamer, it would arrive
sound without previous drying. I think I will try that
experiment, shortly on a box or a barrel of our Concord maize, as
Lidian Emerson confidently engages to send you accurate recipes
for johnny-cake, mush, and hominy.
---------
* The _Inferno_ of Dante, a translation in prose by John Carlyle;
an excellent piece of work, still in demand.
---------
Why did you not send me word of Clough's hexameter poem, which I
have now received and read with much joy.
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