512
40s.; and the price never differs in any tiling like such a pro-portion.
In ancient times a large quantity of oats used to be maltedin Scotland , from which ale was brewed, though the practiceis now entirely gone into disuse. But of late years considera-ble quantities have been used by distillers of whisky, brokendown along with unmalted barley, and masked or brewed inconjunction with a certain proportion of malt. The oats arealleged to be useful in this process, keeping the grindedmalt and barley so open or pervious, as to give out the wholesoluble parts of the broken grain and malt to the hot waterin the mash-tun.
In the mill process for converting oats into meal, after be-ing previously dried on a kiln, they are, in the first place,made to pass through the mill-stones, regulated at such a dis-tance as only to remove the external shell or husk, which isseparated from the unbroken kernel by means of a winnow-ing-machine, attached to the mill gear. These separatedshells, or sheallings, are only useful as fuel in the kiln fordrying other parcels of oats, being so indestructible in theirnature, as hardly to be susceptible of putrefaction, even whenlong mixed with rotting muck, and they arc utterly unfit forfood to any kind of farm-stock. Even in the kiln-fire, theyconsume very imperfectly into a kind of light charcoal, mixedwith white ashes.
The kernels of the oats, after the shells are removed by thisfirst operation, are named grits or groats, formerly much usedin broths, which constitute a material portion of ordinaryScotch fare; but pot-barley, which is of the same descrip-tion, is now almost universally preferred. The grits are nextgrinded over again into a coarse rough meal, different in itsfineness according to the taste or custom of different districts,much of the kernel being only broke down into rough frag-ments. This meal is afterwards sifted to remove the thinpellicle or inner skin of the husk, which adheres to the grits.From these skins, called provincially seeds, to which some of