STARCH

(Germ, stflrke.) Starch is one of the com monest proximate principles of vegetables. It is characterized by its insipidity, and by insolubility in cold water, in alcohol, and in ether. It di olves in, or at least forms a gelatinous compound with water, heated to 1750; and this solution, even when much diluted, is rendered blue by iodine. This admirable test of the presence of starch is not effective in hot solutions; and, by boiling, the blue colour disappears, but returns in strong solutions as they cool. The term starch is commercially applied to that obtained from wheat, which, for this manufacture, is ground and diffused through vats of water, where it undergoes a slight fermentation, and acquires a peculiar sour smell. Apart of the gluten and albumen of the grain is thus separated in the form of a viscid scum; the starch being in the form of a finely divided white powder, Is gradually further separated by washing in large quantities of water, from which it is ultimately allowed to settle, and put into boxes lined with linen to drain; it is then cut into squares, which are dried first in airy chambers upon porous bricks, and afterwards rolled up in papers and stove dried; it isun this latter operation that the starch acquires that peculiar columnar texture and fracture which is well exhibited on opening a paper parcel as it comes from the stove. A little smalt h generally added to the starch, by which it acquires a very pale blue tint, and is better adapted to conceal or cover the yellow tint acquired by worn linen. Starch may be obtained from many other grains, and from potatoes and 1153 III. In the third year of Henry VII. an act was pa ed giving determinate criminal powers, extending chiefly to state offences and misdemeanors of a pubhc kind, to the court of star chamber. The judges were four high officers of state, with power to join a bishop and a temporal lord of the council, and two justices of the courts of Westminster, to their number. They proceeded by bill and information without the a istance of a jury. The sittings of the privy council itself, as a criminal court, were after this gradually abandoned, and its powers transferred to the star chamber. This court continued to exercise very extensive jurisdiction, both in political matters and in private concerns, during the reigns of Henry VIII. and his succe ors, until it was finally di olved by 16 Car. 1, c. 10, together with what remained of its cognate jurisdictions. (See Council, Privy.) [s. 1167]