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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



GENUINE STARCH EACTORIES. 



By BYRON D. IIALSTED, Sc. D., 



EUTGEKS COLLEGE. 



MUCH in this world is neither npon first nor last analysis true 

 to name. From the corner grocery we bny a pound of 

 starch in a rectangular package highly decorated with lithograph 

 and lettering, setting forth the excellences of the product. " supe- 

 rior to all others," and manufactured, with the utmost care, by 

 Messrs. So-and-So. The fact is that the big seven-story establish- 

 ment did not make a grain of the starch, and the best that can be 

 claimed is a satisfactory method of bringing the product already 

 formed into the present acceptable condition. 



But it is not the purpose of this paper to decry the refineries, 

 whether they be of starch, sugar, or this or that of a hundred 

 natural products, but to direct attention to the source of that very 

 common and, it may be safely said, indispensable substance known 

 to the English-speaking people as starch. 



It will be no new surprise to state, by way of introduction to 

 the subject, that starch is the ordinary everyday product of ordi- 

 nary everyday plants. So humble a vegetable as the potato has 



gained its way into all 

 lands of the more civ- 

 ilized peoples almost 

 solely because it has a 

 habit of storing away, 

 in large underground 

 stems, a vast amount 

 of starch. Let this 

 provident tendency 

 disappear in this plant 

 for a single season, 

 and the crop growers 

 would discard it from 

 their list of remunera- 

 tive plants, while mil- 

 lions of people would 

 turn with dismay to 

 some other source of 

 a daily supply of starch. What this change in the nature of a 

 single kind of plant would mean to the human race words can not 

 describe. If the famine in Ireland of 1845 and some later years, 

 induced by a rot in the potato, is any index, the misery would be 



Fio. 1. — Starch Grantles of the Potato. 



