SAGO TAPIOCA. 325 



of a pinkish or yellowish colour, the size of a pin's head. It 

 is the sort in most common use. Common or brown sago 

 consists of grains that vary in size from that of pearl barley to 

 that of peas. It is of a whitish-brown colour, or rather each 

 grain is white on one side and brown on the opposite side. 

 The sago-meal and the brown sago, when infused in water, do 

 not swell up and afford a blue colour on the addition of iodine, 

 as is the case with the pearl sago. This difference depends on 

 the mode of the preparation of each, the pearl sago being 

 alone subjected in the process to so much heat as to rupture 

 its grains. The colouring matter contained in all kinds of 

 sago renders them less prized than the white arrowroot and 

 tapioca. Pearl sago may, however, be bleached and rendered 

 quite white. Bleached pearl sago is, however, very like an 

 imitation sago manufactured from potato- starch. The black 

 cross, the centre of which corresponds to the hilum of the 

 granule of the potato-starch, when illuminated by polarised 

 light, and a Nicol's prism interposed between the object and 

 the eye, serves sufficiently to detect such frauds. 



Great efforts were made some years back to introduce sago 

 largely as food for domestic animals, and especially for horses ; 

 but experience seems to have given unfavourable results or 

 perhaps the subsequent diffusion of Liebig's views as to the 

 insufficiency of non-nitrogenised food to repair the blood and 

 the muscular llesh prevented the proposal from receiving any 

 extensive trial. 



Tapioca. Among the well-known forms of amylaceous 

 nutriment is that known as tapioca, derived from the Jatropha 

 ' manihot. It is brought to this country from the Brazils. It 

 is sometimes imported in the form of a white powder, in which 

 case it is named Brazilian arrowroot, tapioca meal, mandiocca, 

 moussache, or cipipa. Its most common form, however, is 

 that of small irregular lumps, and it is to this form that the 



