the vessel, while the fluid above will be clear and may be poured off.
This white sediment consists of minute grains of starch, each of
which, examined with the microscope, will be found to have a
concentrically laminated structure. If the fluid from which the starch
was deposited is now boiled it will become turbid, just as white of
egg diluted with water does when it is boiled, and eventually a
whitish lumpy substance will collect at the bottom of the vessel. This
substance is called vegetable albumin.

Besides the albumin, the gluten, and the starch, other substances
about which this rough method of analysis gives us no information, are
contained in the wheat grain. For example, there is woody matter or
cellulose, and a certain quantity of sugar and fat. It would be
possible to obtain a substance similar to albumin, starch, saccharine,
and fatty matters, and cellulose, by treating the stem, leaves, and
root in a similar fashion, but the cellulose would be in far larger
proportion. Straw, in fact, which consists of the dry stem and leaves
of the wheat plant, is almost wholly made up of cellulose. Besides
this, however, it contains a certain proportion of mineral bodies,
among them, pure flint or silica; and, if you should ever see a wheat
rick burnt, you will find more or less of this silica, in a glassy
condition, in the embers. In the living plant, all these bodies are
combined with a large proportion of water, or are dissolved, or
suspended in that fluid. The relative quantity of water is much
greater in the stem and leaves than in the seed.

Everybody has seen a common fowl. It is an active creature which runs
about and sometimes flies. It has a body covered with feathers,
provided with two wings and two legs, and ending at one end in a neck
terminated by a head with a beak, between the two parts of which the