STARCH, ITS VARIETIES AND CHANGES. 
247 
given this nitrogenized compound, so that more muscular fibre 
might have been formed ? We are quite aware that animals 
cannot live on concentrated nutriment, and that they must 
have heat-giving principles, as well as flesh-forming ones, in 
their food. Still we do think the former has been carried a 
little too far, and we hope obesity has had its day. 
The cost of gluten, may possibly in this form be at present 
too great, but it would not be necessary to separate so com¬ 
pletely the starch from it, when required for the lower animals. 
Unquestionably, for man it will constitute an admirable article 
of diet, when he is invalided, or otherwise, since it may be 
added to other kinds of food to increase their nutritive 
properties. Perhaps, too, it may be used as pemmican is for 
long voyages, &c., while it may be substituted for animal 
albumen for mordanting the new colours. 
Varieties of Starch. 
The other forms in which starch is commonly met with in 
the shops are arrow-root, sago, saloop, tapioca, and potato 
and rice starch. But from all tubers and grains it may be 
procured; and various names are given to it, depending on 
its source. The starch-globule, in all these, differs both in 
size and shape. Arrow-root is obtained from the root of the 
Maranta arundinacea , a plant cultivated both in the East and 
West Indies. Rice starch is procured from the ground grain 
by the action of alkalies or their carbonates on it, which 
dissolve the gluten, and set free the starch. By rasping the 
tuber of the potato, and allowing water to flow through the 
pulpy mass, the starch is quickly washed out, and the vege¬ 
table fibre— cellulose —left behind. Sago is formed from the 
cellular tissue of the interior of a palm ; tapioca, from the 
mandioc plant —Jatropha maniliot; and saloop, from the roots 
of the male orchis —Orchis mascula. 
Starch, when pure, is a white substance, nearly devoid of 
taste and smell, undergoing no change if kept dry, insoluble 
in cold water, but soluble if so be its temperature is raised to 
150° or 180°, when it forms a viscid solution, becoming as it 
cools a transparent jelly. In this state it is used for the 
purpose of stiffening muslin and other goods. Its intro¬ 
duction into the laundry has been thus given : 
“ The most peculiar article of dress belonging to the age of Elizabeth 
was the ruff, the pointed edges of which were called piccadillies. Stiffness 
was an indispensable quality in the ruff, and, with such delicate 
materials, the requisite tenacity was unattainable except by the agency 
of starch. This fact helps us to fix tolerably accurately the date about 
