A STUDY OF WHEAT. 



working out the adulterations of any flour or spice. There is 

 seldom any nucleus present ; when it is present though, it will 

 be found near the center of the starch grain. Still more sel- 

 dom are there any rings present. According to Dr. Julius 

 Wiesner, Professor in the University of Vienna, there is to be 

 found still a third kind of starch grains in wheat; a compound 

 grain found in the interior of the outer layer of albumen, and 

 made up of from two to twenty-five individual granules. 

 These compound grains are very seldom found in either the 

 flour or in commercial wheat starch. Occasionally broken pieces 

 of the compound grains are found, but these are about all 

 the indications of a compound grain we see. They are ellip- 



Fig. 5. StarcJi from a Grain of Wheat. X j/j. 



tical or egg-shaped and frequently much larger than the lenti- 

 cular grains. When subjected to dry heat, the grains of wheat 

 starch are changed very much in appearance, being warped 

 considerably from their normal shape. They are larger, more 

 brittle and more transparent. However, they generally can be 

 identified, when subjected to either dry or moist heat if the 

 moist heat be not raised to boiling-point, which would change 

 it to a gelatinous mass. The large grains of wheat starch in 

 their natural or normal state are very uniform in size for the 

 same variey of wheat, but the starch grains found in the dif- 

 ferent varieties of wheat differ considerably in size. The aver- 

 age size is about 1-40 of a millimeter (i-iooo of an inch) in 

 diameter. The theory of the growth and formation of these 

 starches is of considerable interest. 



