Vegetable substances used for the food of man / [Edwin Lankester. Revised and partly rewritten].

  • Edwin Lankester
Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Vegetable substances used for the food of man / [Edwin Lankester. Revised and partly rewritten]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    177/518 page 171
    Bonjcan, put this to the test, and lived for several days on the diseased potatoes, and drank tlie water in which they were boiled, and yet suffered no other inconvenience than would have occurred I'rom having recourse to a diet of healthy potatoes. Under the microscope the granules of starch apjicar to have suffered no change; and when separated, they are as available for all the purposes of diet as those pro- cured from healthy potatoes. The starch is easily sepa- rated from the potato by scraping it on a grater and throwing the softened pulj) into water, when the cellular and fibrous matter will fall to the bottom of the water insoluble, and the starch will be held in suspension in the supernatant fluid. The liquid, on being decanted off and set aside, will deposit the starch, which may be re-washed, and may then be used for all the purposes of aiTow-root, sago, or tapioca. The cause of this disorder has been the occasion of difference amongst those who have written on the sub- ject. During the progress of the disease, and especially during the latter stages in the tissues of the tuber, several species of the lower order of fungi have been observed to be present; and from a knowledge of the I'act that the spores of some of these fungi are capable of engen- dering other forms of disease in plants, it has been con- cluded that they arc the cause of the disease in this instance. Of those who defend this theory of the origin of the potato murrain, there is no one whose opinion is entitled to more respect than that of the Rev. M. J. Berkeley, author of a volume on the fungi of Smith’s ‘ English Botany.’ In a paj)cr in the first volume of the ‘ Journal of the Horticultural Society’ he says, “The decay is the consequence of the presence of the mould, and not the mould of the decay. It is not the habit of the allied species to ju'cy on decayed or dccaj - ing matter, but to ])roduce decay, a fact which is of the first importance, 'riiough so many other species have this habit,^ those have not. The jilant then l)cconics unhealthy in consequence of the jircscnce of the mould, which feeds upon its juices and prevents the elaboration
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