222 SELECTED ARTICLES. 
sago would have been confounded with the other species, as 
regards its chemical properties. 
In order to examine sago well, says M. Raspail, it is neces- 
sary to allow it to remain in cold water during some hours. 
If portions of the superficies of the globules are then submit- 
ted to the microscope, w^e are convinced that all the grains of 
fecula have been broken, for the teguments, torn and gaping, 
are spread by myriads over the stage. Beneath this super- 
ficial layer, the grains, without having been broken, exhibit in 
their interior, and sometimes upon a point of their surface, a 
granular arrangement, — a corrugation to be detected upon all 
the feculse that have been submitted for a moment to the action 
of heat, after having been simply moistened or kneeded. In 
the centre of the globules, on the contrary, there are per- 
ceived only whole grains not at all altered. 
M. Planche has verified the correctness of the microscopic 
experiments of M. Raspail upon the sago of the Maldives, 
but he opposes the conclusions he has deduced from them by 
the following observations. These granules, which M. Ras- 
pail represents to us as torn and gaping, must necessarily yield 
to the water a quantity, more or less considerable, of the 
soluble matter they contain. Now M. Planche adverts 
to the fact that in his own essays, the five first varieties of 
sago, and especially that of the Maldives, did not yield to cold 
water the slightest trace of starch after twenty-four hours 
maceration. The same sago of the Maldives, allowed to remain 
in water during many months, has afforded a similar negative 
result, which proves, as he states, that the teguments of the 
fecula in the sago do not yield to the efforts of the water they 
enclose, and resist it so thoroughly, on the contrary, that if a 
grain of sago saturated with water, be divided with a scalpel, 
the amylaceous granules escape the action of the instrument, 
and can be agitated with cold water, without their losing the 
smallest quantity of amidine; whilst if the same humid sago 
be triturated for some time, the granules burst and yield their 
soluble parts to cold water, which then exhibits the character- 
istics of a solution of starch. Besides, the irregularity of 
