BULLETIN OF THE BUSSEY INSTITUTION. 81 
can be changed to a kind of sugar by the action of albuminoid 
matters in a state of change such as exist in malt prepared from 
barley or from the other cereal grains. Kirchoff announced this 
discovery at a meeting of the Academy of St. Petersburg in 1814,* 
and it is said that syrup prepared in accordance with his direc- 
tions was soon afterward obtainable in Germany.f But this 
remark probably applied to products from the earlier process of 
Kirchoff in which starch was treated with sulphuric acid. The 
discovery of this process was published in 1812 and attracted 
immediate and widespread attention. Several years after Kirchoff, 
Dubrunfaut,{ in France, published the results of his investigation | 
of the matter and forecast the discovery (in 1833) of diastase, 
maltine, and the other enzyms with the remark ‘‘ Hordein or 
some other substance in the barley first liquefies the potatoes 
(starch).” Since then much glucose has been made in this way 
in Europe to be sold as such, though the practice of the present 
time is most decidedly to prepare it by means of acids rather 
than by means of malt. 
In view of the historical interest of the subject, we upplied to 
a recent graduate of the Bussey Institution, Mr. Shin-ichi Takaki, ° 
of Tokio, to procure for us some of the material, and to learn 
what he could with regard to the details of the process of making 
it. We are under great obligations to Mr. Takaki for the effec- 
. tive manner in which he has complied with our wishes. A pottle 
of the material procured by him, labelled with Japanese words 
meaning ‘‘ millet midzu-ame” was most distinctly a highly refined 
article, — such as an apothecary would be apt to call ‘‘an elegant 
preparation.” It was a dense, clear syrup of light amber color, 
closely resembling the best commercial glucose of American 
manufacture in respect to its physical properties and taste, except 
that it has a faint though perceptible odor of malt. As con- 
trasted with the ‘‘ malt extracts” now so commonly made in this 
country for physicians use, the midzu-ame is incomparably supe- 
rior both in appearance and in character. Its most prominent 
feature is its freedom from all foreign extractive matter, being in 
* See Schweigger’s Journal fiir Chemie und Physik, 1815, 14. 389, 394, 
396, 398. 
+ Leichs, J. C., Die Zuker-Fabrikation, Niirnberg, 1835, page 30, note. 
+ Memoire sur la Saccharification des Fecules, Paris, 1823. 
