76 ' BULLETIN OF THE BUSSEY INSTITUTION. 
In order to see whether soluble starch could be prepared any 
more readily from the corn after it had been popped than before, 
experiments * were made as follows : — 
Two or three grams of each of the fine meals —and of com- - 
mercial (maize) starch also, for the sake of comparison — having 
been stirred up with 10 to 15 cc. of a concentrated solution of 
sodium hydroxide, it was noticed that thick pastes began to 
form in the course of a few minutes in the case of the unpopped 
corn and of the starch also, while no such paste was formed by 
the action of the alkali on the meal of the popped corn, though 
a paste that gave a bright blue coloration with an aqueous solu- 
tion of iodine was obtained on boiling some of the popped corn 
meal with a small quantity of water. 
The mixtures of the several materials and the sodium hydroxide 
were left at rest during three or four hours and then neutralized 
with dilute hydrochloric acid. A large excess of concentrated 
hydrochloric acid was next added to make the mixtures fluid, and 
the resulting solutions were filtered through double filters with the 
aid of a suction pump. It was observed that the mixture from 
the unpopped corn filtered much more readily than did that from 
the popped corn. On adding an excess of 95 per cent. alcohol to 
each of the filtrates, white precipitates of soluble starch began to 
form at once and settled out in the course of a night. After 
decanting off the supernatant liquors the precipitates were washed 
by decantation with cold water, and portions from each of them 
were dissolved in water at 60° to 80°C. All these solutions gave 
deep blue colorations on being tested with an aqueous solution of 
iodine. But so far from there being any evidence that soluble 
starch is formed when corn is popped, the appearances left an 
impression that rather more soluble starch was obtained from the 
unpopped corn than from the popped in the experiment above 
described. 
[ Norr.—Since this article was written, I have learned through 
a paper published by the United States Department of Agricul- 
ture, that Professor William H. Brewer, of New Haven, long 
ago disproved the notion that the oil in corn has any influence on 
* After Bondonneau, Bulletin de la Societ¢ Chimique de Paris, 1874 (N.s.), 
21. 148. 
+ Experiment Station Work XX VI, Farmers’ Bulletin, 1904, No. 202, p.17- 
