THE GRANULE OF STARCH. 687 



were made with skillfully drawn lines, and impressed with stone, clay, 

 and straw. Garcilasso de Vega, in his " General History of Peru," 

 composed at the beginning of the seventeenth century, gives a well- 

 drawn plan of the city of Cuzco, with representations of the streets, 

 squares, and brooks, which was made at Muyna ; and he tells also of 

 representations of entire districts. The beauty of these works is at- 

 tested by several Spanish authorities. Balboa speaks of a plan of the 

 besieged fortress, Pomacocha, which was sent to the war council at 

 the capital. Bastian had made for the Royal Museum in Berlin a copy 

 of the plan of an ancient Inca city which he saw at Cuenca, a picture 

 of which was published in the " Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie," in 1877. 

 The squares and public places and the royal palaces were indicated 

 by the arrangement of blocks of wood. 



The Polynesians, the Esquimaux, and the Indians, have all thus 

 given us the marks of the different degrees of advancement they have 

 independently made in the use of this, the most important of geo- 

 graphical aids. In their ignorance of the art of writing, and their 

 want of suitable writing materials, they have made use of the same 

 primitive methods as the people of the German coasts still employ. 

 When the progress from tribal communism to a formulated state-life 

 and the transition from trivial, groping essays to a public provision for 

 a system of written records are consummated, well-executed maps ap- 

 pear among the evidences of the degree of civilization that has been 

 reached. Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from Das 

 Ausland. 



THE GRANULE OF STARCH. 



BY AN ANALYST. 



THERE may not seem much in a grain of starch, and in point of 

 bulk there is very little ; but we shall endeavor to show that 

 there is a good deal of interesting and valuable information to be de- 

 rived from a careful study of the little granule. 



We are all familiar with such commodities as flour, potatoes, Indian 

 corn, sago, peas, and arrowroot, and are consequently to some extent 

 acquainted with what starch is ; for all these substances consist essen- 

 tially of starch, along with water and some minor admixtures. If we 

 take a slice of a potato, for instance, and rub it on a grater of any sort 

 in a basin of cold water, the water will soon become turbid ; and a 

 drop of it examined with a microscope will be found to contain a num- 

 ber of minute oval granules, which would in time sink to the bottom 

 of the basin, forming a white deposit. These are grains of starch ; 

 and so minute are some varieties that three thousand of them laid end 

 to end would barely make an inch. 



