This is another of the useful productions of nature, for which we are indirectly indebted to the vegetable kingdom; for were it not for the rich pastures forming the green carpet of the earth, it would be impossible for man to keep large flocks of sheep for the production of wool. Wool, like the hair of most animals, completes its growth in a year, and then exhibits a tendency to fall off. For the production of wool in England and Wales it has been estimated that there are no less than 27,000,000 sheep and lambs; and, in Great Britain and Ireland, the total number is estimated at 82,000,000. Wool was not manufactured in any quantity in England until 1331, when the weaving of it was introduced by John Kempe and other artizans from Flanders. The exportation or non-exportation of wool has from time to time formed a vexed subject for legislators. Woollen clothes were made an article of commerce in the reign of Julius Cæsar. They were made in England prior to 1200. Blankets were first made in England in 1340. The art of dyeing wools was first introduced into England in 1608. The annual value of the raw material in wool is set down at £6,000,000; the wages of workmen engaged in the wool trade, £9,600,000. The number of people employed is said to be 500,000.
Starch is one of the most useful products of the vegetable kingdom. As a rule, a vegetable, if nutritious at all, is so according to the amount of starch which it contains. It is most abundantly found in the seeds of plants, and especially in the wheat tribe.
It is also met with in the cellular tissues of plants, and especially in such underground stems as the potatoe, carrot, turnip, &c., and the stems of the sago-palm fig, &c. It is also found in the bark of some trees.
"Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning."—James i.
1203. Why is the horse chestnut, though containing a great quantity of starch, unfit for food?
Because (like many other vegetable productions) it contains with the starch an acrid juice, which renders it unhealthy; and although the juice can be separated from the starch, the process is too expensive to be made generally available.
The starch which is used for domestic purposes is an artificial preparation, and does not properly represent the starch of nutrition. A better idea of it is afforded by the meal of a flowery potatoe. The starch used by laundresses is frequently prepared from diseased potatoes. This does not impair the quality of the starch, for the purposes of the laundress, and the reason why potatoes that are diseased are thus applied is, that it is one method of saving some part of their value. The finest kinds of starch are prepared from rice. It is prepared by breaking the pulp, and disengaging the starch from the cells; and it is then put through other processes to remove the fragments of the broken cells. But in the flowery meal of the potatoe, the starch cell may be seen entire.