Some ContTRIBUTIONS TO THE CHEMISTRY OF Mucor. 
By CLARENCE Hi. May. 
In Physiological Chemistry, one meets with a proteid that has been 
receiving more or less attention for several years past. This proteid is 
classed among the glyco-albumins and occurs especially in ligaments and 
tendons. Heretofore, the main problem connected with the chemistry of 
this substance or group of very closely related substances, as the case may 
be, has been the quantitative separation of the mucoid from mixtures of 
albumin such as blood and egg albumin, and mucoid. The usual method 
of separation has been to boil the neutral solution of true albumin and 
mucoid, thereby coagulating the blood or egg albumin and leaving the mu- 
coid in the filtrate. By acidifying the filtrate, it yielded the mucoid as a 
flocculent precipitate which could be fil@red and then weighed. 
The purpose of this work was to ascertain first, whether mucoid was 
completely precipitated by the addition of a slight excess of dilute acid 
to the mucoid solution (the solvent being half-saturated lime water). 
Secondly, we wished to find out whether albumins were precipitated from 
a mixture of albumin and mucoid, by acidifying the mixture in the cold. 
Thirdly, we wished to ascertain whether mucoid coagulated by being boiled 
in a neutral solution in the presence of neutral salts. And lastly, we wished 
to see whether the various precipitations of the mucoid sample showed any 
differences in nitrogen content; in other words we desired to examine the 
homogeneity of the various acid. precipitates. 
The mucoid used was from several beef tendons (Achilles), and was 
prepared by removing all water-soluble proteids by careful washing of the 
tendons in tap water. The tendons were then cut into thin slices trans- 
versly and again thoroughly washed with cold water. The next treatment 
was to allow the slices of tendon to extract with half-saturated lime water 
for a day. This extract was filtered and made slightly acid with .2 per 
cent. hydrochloric acid, using litmus paper as indicator. The solution, 
with a casein-like precipitate was allowed to stand a short time when the 
precipitate flocked together and settled to the bottem of the container, leay- 
ing a perfectly clear supernatant liquid. 
