400 BOO! KEEGAN [DECEMBER 
undergoes no change in winter. N. J. C. Muller was the first to 
observe the disappearance of the rind starch in winter, and he thought 
that it migrated into the wood. Russow, in the winter of 1880-81, 
examined the barks of ninety-two different tree stems up to sixty years 
old, and found starch only in ten kinds, but as compared with the 
autumnal content it showed a great diminution; experimenting again 
in the colder winter of 1882, he found that in all species of tree the 
starch had disappeared up to isolated traces, it being transformed 
principally into fat-oil; on the other hand, he came to the conclusion 
that the starch had all the time remained unchanged in the wood of all 
the species investigated. He found, moreover, that towards the end 
of March the rind starch had been copiously formed again, «ec. long 
before the bursting of the buds, the suppression of the carbohydrate 
thus lasting from November till April. In 1884 Baranetzky and 
Grebnitzky published the results of their researches. They found that 
not only the rind starch but also the wood starch was reduced in 
winter, and may even disappear altogether, eg. in lime tree, fat-oil 
stepping into its place; on the other hand, in hard-wooded trees, while 
the starch vanishes entirely from the rind, it remains, though somewhat 
reduced in quantity, in the wood. In 1890 Dr. A. Fischer confirmed 
the views of these observers, and further investigated the method and 
course pursued in the process of the starch dissolution in fat-trees 
during the autumn. He emphasised the opinion that the entire 
wood-starch of the younger twigs in fat-trees is transformed on the 
spot, ae. the principal mass of the starch undergoes no translocation. 
He was also disposed to conclude that the greater part of the fat in 
the older wood of certain trees is never changed at all, whereas that 
contained in the rind disappears almost entirely in spring and summer. 
He further recognised eight phases of starch transformation, viz. a 
maximum in October and in April, a minimum in December, January, 
and February, and again in the latter half of May, a dissolution in 
November and beginning of May, a regeneration in March, and a 
storing up from June till October. In 1891 Monsieur Emile Mer, 
who had studied the distribution of starch in the principal trees and 
indigenous shrubs of France, found that in the middle of November a 
great change had already been wrought, the starch had nearly all 
disappeared from the cortex and liber at least in the branches as well 
as in the middle and upper parts of the trunk; in the wood it had 
notably diminished in white-wooded trees, though still abundant in 
hard-wooded trees, while plants with persistent leaves hardly held it 
any longer save at the base of the stem and in the current year's 
twigs chiefly on a level with the buds. He found that the starch 
gradually passes from the wood into the liber, first from the medullary 
rays, then from the wood parenchyma, and finally from the medullary 
sheath and pith; the rays of the young liber are the last to yield up 
the vanishing starch. Apparently this absorption must needs, he 
