GENUINE STARCH FACTORIES. 



717 



Fig. 1. — Starch Granules of Corn. 



something worse than we should care to even dream of. When 

 there is a shortage of starch in India, a distress follows that is 

 felt through the bonds of sympathy, if in no other way, the whole 

 world round. Let rice fail to 

 mature its grain, which means, 

 in short, not to store its starch 

 in available form for man, and 

 the dependent race is brought 

 to the ghostly condition of star- 

 vation and thrown upon the 

 charity of those people whose 

 starch is in their grain eleva- 

 tors, sacks, and barrels almost 

 without number. 



Starch, it would seem from 

 this, is the prime food element 

 of the human family, the chief 

 factor in the upbuilding of a race, because a fundamental aliment 

 of our bodies. 



If the starch' factories do not make, in the true sense, the 

 product of their mills, it may be to the point to consider how this 

 all-important substance comes into existence. The organic chem- 

 ist tells us that starch is a ternary compound, and this agrees closely 

 with the definition laid down by the dictionaries, only they add 

 that it is odorless, tasteless, and insoluble in water. It is one of 

 the proximate principles of plants, and is stored in the form of 

 granules wonderfully variable in size and shape, but each kind 

 having a type that is adhered to with much regularity. For 

 example, the ordinary potato {Solanum tuberosum L.) produces 

 a starch granule that is characterized by a form resembling the 

 shell of the oyster. Tig. 1 is from a camera drawing of a cell 

 from the center of a potato, with portions of adjoining cells, all 

 of which were packed full of starch, a few grains only being rep- 

 re'sented. 



Starch is acted upon differently by reagents, one of the leading 

 tests for it being a solution of iodine. A drop of a very weak solu- 

 tion will determine the presence of starch in a cuff or shirt front 

 by leaving a blue spot or streak where the iodine has been applied. 

 By means of this reagent the student of plant tissues is readily able 

 to locate starch when present in any slice of tissue he may have 

 made. He would, for example, find much more starch in the 

 tuber of the potato than in any other portion of the plant, and 

 there the grains will be found many times larger than in the stem 

 or the cells of the green leaves. Of the relation of the starch in 



