262 THE MICROSCOPICAL NEWS. 
less was there any actually fluid water to be seen. Indeed, usually 
all the adjacent soil is of a dry kind, for we are on the plateau of a 
hill about 270 feet above the sea; the level of the local water-reser- 
voir into which our wells dip is about 80 feet below the surface, 
and the subsoil is very porous; so that, altogether, the welcome 
rains sink away from our garden-earth rather rapidly. The total 
rainfall from the 19th of March to the end of the month was, our 
Secretary tells me, eight-tenths of an inch, a little over eighty tons 
per acre. No rain had fallen in April, when, on the gth, my 
gardener, with some difficulty, so closed the wound as to stop the 
outflow. During the earlier part of the time we had frosts at 
night, and sunshine but with extremely cold winds during the days. 
At one time the exuding sap gave, I am told by two different ob- 
servers, icicles a foot long. A much warmer, almost summer, 
temperature prevailed afterwards, and no wind. On the 4th of April 
the temperature of the sap as it escaped was constant at 52° F., 
while that of the surrounding air was varying considerably. * 
The collected sap was a clear, bright, water-like fluid. After a 
pint had stood aside for twelve hours, there was the merest trace of 
a sediment at the bottom of the vessel. The microscope showed 
this to consist of parenchymatous cells, with here and there a group 
of the wheel-like cells which botanists, I think, term sphere- 
crystals. The sap was slightly heavier than water, in the propor- 
tion of 1005 to 1000. It had a faintly sweet taste and a very 
slight aromatic odour. 
Chemical analysis showed that this sap consisted of 99 parts of 
pure water with one part of dissolved solid matter. Eleven-twelfths 
of the latter was sugar. Besides sugar, which occurred in this sap 
to the extent of 616 grains, nearly an ounce and a half, per gallon, 
there were present a mere trace of mucilage ; no starch; no tannin ; 
3% grains per gallon of ammoniacal salts yielding 10 per cent. of 
nitrogen ; 3 grains of albumenoid matter yielding 10 per cent. of 
* In ‘Nature’ for April 5th, 1883, Mr. F. M. Burton, writing, on March 
28th, from Highfield, Gainsborough, says: ‘‘ A remarkable instance of the strong 
up-rush of sap in trees at this time of the year occurred here during the late 
severe weather. The boughs of a sycamore overhanging a road were trimmed 
on the 21st of March during a very keen frost, and next day icicles of frozen sap, 
varying in length from a couple of inches to a foot, were hanging from the 
severed ends. The icicles were semi-opaque in appearance and slightly 
iridescent, like the sheen on the moonstone, and, when put in a bottle and 
melted, the product was pure sap. The sycamore, being one of the earliest 
trees to develop leaves, had its sap rising, notwithstanding the intense cold and 
late season; while a beech, which is much later in coming out, and an ash, 
which is usually latest of all, whose boughs had also been lopped, showed no 
signs of bleeding, and the cuts remained dry and bare. The icicles have been 
melted, reformed, and melted again since the 21st, and still the sap is dropping 
from the cuts.” 
