HISTORY OF SAGO, 
217 
Sago of the Maldives. 
This sago, which is still met with in some of the drug 
houses of Paris, is furnished by a palm of the Island of Male, 
the largest and best cultivated of the Maldives. The specimen 
in the possession of M. Planche was sent to him by Mr. John 
Miller, a naturalist of Charlestown, who had dwelt many 
months upon the Malabar coast nearest to this isle. The sago 
of the Maldives comes to us under the form of rounded or 
ovoid grains, of considerable hardness, the diameter of which 
varies from one to five millimetres; some present a uniform 
colour of dried clay throughout their entire surface; others 
exhibit this colour on one side only, with a degree of the same 
tint on the opposite; others in smaller number are almost 
white. A vessel conveniently adapted to contain 1.000 parts 
in weight of pure water, when filled with this sago, contained 
732 parts. 
Placed in maceration during twenty-four hours with ten 
times as much cold distilled water, 500 grains (twenty-seven 
grammes) of this same sago absorbed 570 grains of it, and 
became doubled in volume. Exposure to dry air for some 
hours was sufficient to restore it to its original volume, hard- 
ness and colour; the liquid when filtered was colourless and 
insipid, without action on litmus, upon the tincture of iodine, 
upon that of galls, as also upon a solution of nitrate of silver. 
The tribasic acetate of lead, produced slight disturbance in 
it, but the same phenomenon having been observed with dis- 
tilled water, taken as a means of comparison, this result is 
entirely negative.* 
* The tribasic acetate of lead, in tiie first instance indicated by Dr. 
Bostock as proper to detect the presence of amidon, is, according to M. 
Planche, less sensibly affected than iodine, and demands greater attention 
on the part of the experimenter. All the treatises upon chemistry assert, 
that it is not affected by distilled water, that the disturbances produced only 
when the water contains carbonic acid or the sulphates. M. Planche has 
determined, nevertheless, that distilled water, which has no effect upon a 
solution of barytes or nitrate of silver, or that of bichloride of mercury, 
produces very perceptible railkiness upon the clearest solution of tribasic 
acetate of lead, when it is added in large j)roportion. 
