CHAPTER XX 



USES OF STABCH 



"JT1HAT jelly," remarked Jules, "looks just like 



X the paste that I make with laundry starch. 



Your potato starch there in the bottom of the glass 



has exactly the same appearance as starch dissolved 



in cold water for ironing clothes. ' ' 



"That close resemblance," replied his uncle, "is 

 explained by the fact that potato starch and laundry 

 starch are at bottom the same thing. Both sub- 

 stances are chemically known as f ecula ; but laundry 

 starch is made from cereals, particularly wheat, 

 while fecula, properly speaking, comes either from 

 potatoes or from various grains and roots. 



"Like the starch of the potato, laundry starch is 

 in the form of superposed leaflets, but its grains are 

 much smaller : ten thousand would hardly be enough 

 to make a pellet the size of a pin's head. And there 

 are some still smaller. It would take sixty-four 

 thousand grains of Indian corn starch to make a 

 pin's head or, to be more exact, to fill the inside of 

 a cube measuring one millimeter on a side; and in 

 the case of the beet it would take ten millions. You 

 see that in spite of their excessive smallness, a small- 

 ness that makes them invisible to the naked eye, the 

 starch grains of the potato are giants in comparison. 



98 



