THE CARBOHYDRATES PRODUCED IN CROPS 121 



" rice " are used in the same way as sheep and mutton are 

 used in England. The rice kernel is enclosed in a very hard 

 husk, which requires considerable amount of work over its 

 separation. On a small scale rice is pounded by hand as the 

 recognized work of the women of India. On the large scale in 

 Burmese mills rice is decorticated by machiner>\ The husks 

 so removed are quite worthless, but the resulting grain is 

 very frequently polished still further to produce white rice. 

 The resulting white rice is much less nutritious than the 

 streaked brown rice, which contains the bran adhering to 

 it. White polished rice kernels are very nearly pure starch, 

 whilst rice bran contains most of the oil and albuminoids 

 of the grain. The following table represents the varying 

 composition of the different parts of the rice plant : — 



Table 22. 



Rice may, when merely ground into a powder, serve the 

 purpose of starch, or the starch may be prepared from rice 

 by the usual methods (see p. 117). Both maize and rice 

 lend themselves to the possibility of producing starch by 

 the dry method of grinding and blowing by currents of air, 

 but starch is chiefly made by one of the wet methods. 



