154 
GARDENING AS A SCIENCE. 
Bafc gum, while such, is gum, and nothing else ; no chemist could by any 
human means so re-combine the elements oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon, as t<j 
give them the form of gum. In truth, by the energy of heat, and the attractioi 
of re-agents employed, a substance (as gum) is electrolysed, rent, and torn t< 
pieces, and converted to gases. As, however, analysis acts equally on all th 
substances submitted to its energy, the gaseous, liquid, or solid products s| 
obtained, become standards of comparison ; and thereby we obtain data whence t< 
infer that the real natural elements must, to a very great extent, correspond wit] 
their developed representatives. ) 
2. Starch , according to the same authorities, yields to analysis— 
Carbon 
Oxygen 
Hydrogen 
43-55 
49-68 
6-77 
Or in another view — Carbon 
43-55 
Oxygen and Hydrogen in the proportions to 
form water .... 
:} 
56-45 
100 
100 
Starch forms a principal part of a number of esculent vegetable substances! 
Sowans, Cassava, Salop, Sago, and all of them owe their nutritive powers princi 
pally to starch. 
Potatoes contain much starch ( Amylum ), the quantity varying from abo 
one-eighth to one-sixth of the pulp ; and from this product, or perhaps from th! 
pulp itself, sugar can be, and we believe, is, prepared to a considerable exten 
The French are now in the habit of strengthening their clarets with starch sugi 
in those bad, moist seasons when the grape-juice is deficient of the sacchari: 
principle ; and, as this sugar is analogous to grape sugar, it might be desirable t 
substitute it, in wine-making, for the less wholesome and congenial sugar of th 
i( Cane,” which experience proves to be improper for the preparation of our ow 
grape, currant, and other fruit wines. 
“ 3. Sugar , according to the recent experience of Gay-Lussac and Thenar* 
consists of 42 "47 of carbon, and 57'58 of water or its elements. Lavoisier an 
Dr. Thompson’s analyses agree very nearly with the proportions of 3 carbon, 4 < 
oxygen, and 8 hydrogen” (t. e ., in atomic equivalents). 
i 
Thus, upon every authority, sugar, starch, and gum agree closely in the: 
developed elements ; and, therefore, we need not be surprised that sugar ma 
be readily produced from starch, and that all can be converted into oxal 
acid. 
4. “ Albumen is a substance common to the animal as well as to the vegetab 
kingdom.” So Davy asserted, soon after its discovery in the kernel of the Almon 
Peach-nut, &c . ; and the identity with animal albumen has been proved by Lieb 
and other modem chemists. Like the white of egg, which furnishes the mo 
familiar example of animal albumen, that obtained from vegetables is coagulat* 
by the action of heat or acid, when mixed with water, even when 1 grain only 
diffused through 1,000 grains of water. Albumen is an azotised product ; hen 
its approach to the quality of human blood, 100 parts of white of egg yield 
