372 Description of a Patent Blowing Machine. 
What has just been said is applicable to all the fruits em- 
ployed in making cider: what has been regarded as husks, as re- 
fuse and waste, is as nearly as possible the same substance with 
the cider itself. 
But according to this, the ligneous part which serves for an 
envelope or support to the liquid part of the fruits or roots which 
I have mentioned, will be in an excessively small quantity, since 
mechanical division will be sufficient to make it disappear, by 
causing it to float in the liquid. . 
In fact, this is what I have confirmed by experiments. I took 
off the skin from potatoes and rasped them: I washed the pulp 
in a sieve in order to remove the fecula; I took the husks which I 
put in hot water, and I addded -3,dth of sulphuric acid, in order 
to liquefy the starch that resulted from the boiling of the fecula 
which remained in the husks. I filtered, after boiling some 
hours ; and | found on the filtering paper, of dry ligneous mat- 
ter, only three-fourths of a hundredth part of the weight of the 
potatoes. I had besides ascertained that the fecula when first 
separated from the husks, did not contain an atom of ligneous 
matter; it had formed with the acidulated boiling water a so- 
lution perfectly limpid. 
I ascertained by other experiments, that the skin of common 
sized potatoes in one hundred parts formed only half a part of 
their weight. 
Thus the potatoe presents the singular phenomenon of a 
very hard and very compact solid body, and which contains only 
one part and a fourth in one hundred parts of ligneous matter, 
having when insulated by itself the solid appearance; whereas 
all the rest is formed merely of starch in powder, without any 
adhesion, and more than 5&8,dths of liquid. - 
Apples, pears, beet-root, carrots, and many other roots or 
fruits exhibit also results the more astonishing, since we do not 
even find in them +1,,dth of ligneous matter employed in forming 
the membranes and vessels of those organic beings, and of which 
{,dths are in the liquid state. 
LXXV. Dr. Gitsy’s Description of Mr. Strent’s Patent 
Blowing Machine. 
To Mr. Tilloch. 
Sir, — Hawise lately seen one of the patent blowing ma~- 
chines invented by John Street, Esq. of Clifton, I have been so 
much struck by the great simplicity and ingenuity of the con- 
trivance, as well as by its astonishing power, that I cannot re- 
frain 
