62 ELEMENTS OF APPLIED MICROSCOPY. 
Starke) was originally derived. Its adhesiveness makes 
@t desirable for bookbinder’s paste. Its stiffening power 
gives it supreme importance in the laundry; for society 
has not yet outgrown what the Puritan divine described 
as “a certaine kinde of liquide matter which they call 
starch, wherein the devill hath willed them to wash and 
drie their ruffles, which when they be dry, will then stand 
stiffe and inflexible about their necks.” The quality of 
forming a size gives starch an increasing importance in 
cotton- and paper-mills, print-works and bleacheries. 
As a powder, starch is used in many pharmaceutical 
preparations, in baking-powders and other products 
where some finely divided neutral substance is desirable, 
and for powdering the forms in printing-houses. 
Finally, starch when heated in the dry condition to 
150°-200° F. yields a soluble dextrin, sometimes called Brit- 
ish gum, extensively used as a substitute for gum arabic. 
When treated with weak acids or with certain enzymes 
starch is converted into dextrins and sugars and may thus 
serve as the raw material for the manufacture of glucose, 
maltose, and ultimately of alcohol. 
4. Microscopical Examination of Starch.—Since the 
chemical composition of the various starches is identical, 
the microscope offers the only satisfactory means of 
studying them. Fortunately the appearance of starch- 
grains from the various groups of plants is quite charac- 
teristic; and one familiar with the commoner forms can 
easily detect the sophistication of other substances, like 
mustard, by means of starch, the presence of foreign 
bodies (minerals or seed-hulls) in starch, or the adul- 
