=177. Separation of Starch Particles.=—Advantage is taken of the insolubility of the starch particles to secure their separation from the other vegetable structures with which they are associated. The substances containing starch are reduced to a pulp as fine as possible, and this pulp being placed in a fine cloth the starch particles are washed through the cloth with water. The milky filtrate carrying the starch is collected in an appropriate holder and, after some time, the particles subside. They may then be collected and dried. While this process is the one used commercially in the manufacture of starch, it can only give approximate data respecting the actual quantity of starch in a given weight of the sample. It is not quite possible by this method to get all the starch separated from the rest of the vegetable matter, and particles of foreign substances, such as cellulose and albuminoid matters, may pass through the filter cloth and be found with the deposited granules. It follows from this that the quantitive determination of the starch in a given sample by any direct method is only approximately exact. =178. Methods of Separation.=—Hot acids cannot be safely employed to dissolve starch from its natural concomitants because other carbohydrate bodies become soluble under similar conditions. In such cases the natural sugars which are present should be removed by cold water and the starch dissolved from the residue by a diastatic ferment. Instead of this the sugars may be determined in a separate portion of the pulped material and the starch, together with the sugars, determined, and the quantity of sugar found deducted from the final result. In these cases the final determinations are made on the sugars, after inverting the sucrose, and proceeding as directed for invert sugars in paragraph =141=. The starch, after separation with diastase, is converted into dextrose by one of the methods to be given and the resulting dextrose determined by one of the approved methods.