ns, sea-eagles, and the like birds; for these birds, when shot, have been found, when dying, to disgorge a substance of the same kind.
STAR-STONE, in natural history, a name given to certain extraneous fossile stones, in form of short, and commonly somewhat crooked, columns, composed of several joints; each resembling the figure of a radiated star, with a greater or smaller number of rays in the different species; they are usually found of about an inch in length, and of the thickness of a goose-quill. Some of them have five angles, or rays, and others only four, and in some the angles are equidistant, while in others they are irregularly so; in some also they are short and blunt, while in others they are long, narrow, and pointed; and some have their angles so very short and obtuse, that at first sight they might be taken for entrochoasteriae. The several joints in the same specimen are usually all of the same thickness; this however is not always the case, but in some they are larger at one end and in others at the middle, than in any other part of the body; and some species have one of the rays bifid; so as to emulate the appearance of a six-rayed kind.
STAR-THISTLE. See Centaurea.
STAR-WORT. See Aster.
STARCH, a fecula, or sediment, found at the bottom of vessels wherein wheat has been steeped in water; of which fecula, after separating the bran from it, by passing it through sieves, they form a kind of loaves, which being dried in the sun or an oven, is afterwards cut into little pieces, and so fold. The best starch is white, soft, and friable, and easily broken into powder. Such as require fine starch do not content themselves, like the starch-men, with refuse wheat, but use the finest grain. The process is as follows: The grain being well cleaned is put to ferment in vessels full of water, which they expose to the sun while in its greatest heat, changing the water twice a-day, for the space of eight or twelve days, according to the season. When the grain bursts easily under the finger, they judge it sufficiently fermented. The fermentation perfected, and the grain thus softened, it is put, handful by handful, into a canvas bag, to separate the flour from the husks, which is done by rubbing and beating it on a plank laid across the mouth of an empty vessel that is to receive the flour.
As the vessels are filled with this liquid flour, there is seen floating at the top redish water, which is to be carefully scummed off from time to time, and clean water is to be put in its place; which, after stirring the whole together, is also to be strained through a cloth or sieve, and what is left behind put into the vessel with new water, and exposed to the sun for some time. As the sediment thickens at the bottom, they drain off the water four or five times, by inclining the vessel, but without passing it through the sieve. What remains at bottom is the starch, which they cut in pieces to get out, and leave it to dry in the sun. When dry, it is laid up for use.a town of Germany, in the circle of Upper Saxony, and duchy of Pomerania, situated twenty miles east of Stettin.