Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XV.djvu/331

 STAEOH variety does not assume the columnar form in drying, and is also peculiar in retaining a large amount of moisture, generally 20 per cent., or when saturated 23 per cent. Kice is treated by a process patented in 1840 by Orlando FIG. 8. Corn Starch, magnified 400 diameters. Tones, which is also quite as applicable to the other grains. It is macerated in a weak alka- line solution, a gallon of water to every 2 Ibs. of rice, and about 200 grains of caustic soda or potash to the gallon, which dissolves the gluten but leaves the starch. After standing about 24 hours, the alkaline liquid is drawn off, and the rice after being well washed is drained, and is then ground into flour. A fresh quantity of lye is added to it, and it is again digested for 24 hours, with frequent stir- ring. It is now left for 70 hours, in which time the dissolved gluten rises and is all found in a turbid, yellowish stratum at the top. This portion is carefully drawn off, leaving the fibrous portion of the grain at the bottom intermixed and covered with starch. The de- posit is then stirred up and washed with abun- dance of cold water, and the mixture being left to repose, the fibrous portion is deposited with very little starch, and the remainder is drawn off by a siphon through a fine sieve into a cistern, when it is further washed and pu- rified. The gluten is recovered by neutralizing its solution with sulphuric acid, by which means it is precipitated. The water is then drawn off and the gluten collected, dried, ground, and mixed with other flour. A patent was granted to James Oolman of England in 1842 for making starch from maize and other grains by a process similar to that of Jones; but an application for a renewal of the patent of the latter in 1854 was refused because a similar one had been granted to Thomas Wickham in 1824. The manufacture of starch from Indian corn by an alkaline process was introduced in this country by Thomas Kingsford in 1842-'3, while foreman in the starch factory of William Colgate and co., in New Jersey. The two largest starch manufactories in the world are in the United States : one at Oswego, N. Y., established in 1848 by Thomas Kingsford and son, producing 21,500,000 Ibs. annually; the other at Glen Cove, Long Island, established in 1858 by the Messrs. Duryea, and producing 19,000,000 Ibs. annually. Their products, both laundry and edible corn starch, are largely sent 761 TOL. xv. 21 STAR CHAMBER 319 to European and other foreign markets, and have taken the first prizes at international in- dustrial exhibitions. Each establishment em- ploys its own processes, and the recovery of the gluten is not practised, but this, with other parts of the grain separated from the starch, is sold as food for domestic animals. The part taken by starch as a constituent of food is the most important of its numerous uses, being the principal element in the food of graminivorous and herbivorous animals, and an important one in that of man. It is used in the manufacture of dextrine or British gum, for stiffening linen and cotton goods, and for making size for paper and various other articles. It is employed in medicine for diluting and otherwise modifying the form of various articles of the materia medica; in surgery for preparing splints and bandages ; and in the chemical laboratory for the detection of iodine. Animal starch, called glycogen because it has the property of being transformed into glucose or starch sugar, exists in the livers of all healthy vertebrate animals, and in some of the tissues of other animals. It resembles vegetable starch, but yields a vio- let red instead of a violet blue color with iodine. (See LIVER.) STAR CHAMBER, Conrt of the (curia cameras, stellatm, so called from the gilded stars on the ceiling of the old council chamber of the pal- ace of Westminster, in which it sat), a tribunal famous in the political history of England, and mentioned as early as the reign of Edward III. It appears to have been then, and for upward of a century and a half afterward, identical with the ancient concilium regis, or king's ordinary council, which alone exercised jurisdiction, the concilium secretum, or privy council, being a deliberative body ; and at the accession of Henry VII. its powers had become BO greatly abridged by restraining statutes as to render it almost inoperative as a court of justice. The statute of 3 Henry VII. (1488) placed the jurisdiction on a permanent basis by establishing a court composed of three high officers of state, to whom a fourth was subse- quently added, a bishop and temporal lord of the council, and two justices of the courts of Westminster, which took cognizance of riots, perjury, the misbehavior of sheriffs, and other offences against the administration of justice, without the assistance of a jury. This tribu- nal was distinct from the council itself, of which it may be considered a committee hav- ing delegated powers. It received an augmen- tation of its powers by act of 31 Henry VIII. ; but during the minority of Edward VI. it was merged in the general body of the council, which thenceforth, as in earlier times, con- stituted the real court of the star chamber. The latter continued under the Tudors and their successors, in spite of numerous restrain- ing statutes, 'to exercise a jurisdiction, par- ticularly in criminal matters, unauthorized by the act of Henry VII. erecting a new court, and which gradually rendered it one of the