Starches 



75 



the starch in point of [flavour, and in the most careful mode of preparation great care is 

 taken to remove this skin by peeling. 



Owing to the great care bestowed on its manufacture and to its wide reputation, 

 Bermuda arrowroot commands very high prices in the market. St. Vincent arrowroot 

 realises very much lower prices ; recently, however, an improvement has set in. In Barbados 

 and in other West Indian colonies there is a small amount of arrowroot grown, but it is 

 used locally for laundry and other purposes. 



Arrowroot is one of the most easily digested forms of starch, and is in considerable 

 demand for invalids and children. 



SAGO 



Sago is obtained from the trunks of several species of palms, of which Metroxylon Rumphii 

 is one of the most important. The home of these palms is the Far Eastern tropics, and in the 

 Straits Settlements, the Federated Malay States, Java, the Celebes, Borneo, Sumatra, and 

 the adjoining islands sago is one of the important staples of food. 



The typical sago palms {Metroxylon) live in more or less swampy localities. In common 

 with some other palms they flower only once in their life and then die. The flowering takes 

 place when the plant is about fifteen years old. Immediately, however, before the flowering 

 period the whole trunk of the tree is 

 loaded with starch which the plant 

 has accumulated to be employed in 

 providing the reserve of food in the 

 expected heavy crop of seeds. Man, 

 as usual appropriating the plant's 

 laboriously gathered reserve, fells the 

 tree just before it flowers, and ex- 

 tracts the starch. The root stock 

 does not die, but puts up new shoots 

 or trunks, which are ready to flower 

 in their turn in another fifteen 

 years or so. 



, Dr. O. Beccari, in his Wanderings 

 in the Great Forests of Borneo, gives 

 an interesting account of the prep- 

 aration of sago. The trees are felled 

 when about twenty-five to thirty 

 feet high, and the trunks are 

 stripped of leaves and cut up into 

 sections, each about three feet in 

 length. Each piece is split length- 

 wise, and the soft fibrous tissue 

 scraped out with a kind of wooden 

 hoe. Successive straining and wash- 

 ing processes serve, as with the 

 other starch-yielding plants, to free 

 the starch granules and to separate 

 them from the tissues of the stem. 

 The latter are removed, and the 

 starch is allowed to settle and finally 



it is Collected and dried. Bv SUb- Photo by Sir Harry Johnston, K.C.M.G.,K.C.B. . By permission pf Messrs. Hutchinson 



sequent treatment the sago flour palms — borassus. oil, and -cocoa-nut 



