BULLETIN OF THE BUSSEY INSTITUTION. 85 
supports this idea. Thus Ure* has said of one of his own 
experiments: ‘* The extract of malt was evaporated to dryness at 
a temperature of about 250° F. without the slightest injury to its 
quality or any empyreumatic smell. ... I found it impossible to 
make a solid extract from infusions of malt except at a much 
higher temperature than 175° F.” And againft he says: ‘‘ Well 
saccharified starch paste constitutes a syrup, poor, indeed, in 
sweetness when compared with cane syrup or that of the beet 
root, but then it does not spontaneously blacken into molasses by 
evaporation as solutions of ordinary sugar never fail to do when 
they are concentrated, even with great care. Hence the residuary 
syrups of saccharified fecula may-all be worked up into a toler- 
ably white granular mass which, being crushed, is used by grocers 
to mix with their dark-brown bastard sugars to improve their 
color.” On page 779 Ure tells in detail what happens on evapo- 
rating hydrolyzed starch. 
On considering the history of a product so exceptionally pure 
and highly refined as is the midzu-ame, the thought naturally 
arises that in strict justice this substance should be compared 
not only with the European preparations of the present day, but 
with those of earlier periods, for it is evident that, after all, 
the midzu-ame is closely related to certain crude products that 
were made by our forefathers centuries ago and must have been 
contemporary with them in medieval times; products that is 
to say which had fallen so completely into disuse in Europe 
until quite recently that even the dictionaries of the present day 
no longer describe them as they really were in the beginning. 
Orgeat,— the very name of which is from the French orge 
(barley),— though said to be made from almonds nowadays, 
was originally a more or less concentrated barley wort. Ptisane, 
long a generic name for almost any mild medicinal drink, was 
barley-water, the Gerstenwasser of the Germans; while ‘‘ barley 
sugar’? —the Sucre d’orge of the French and Gerstenzucker of the 
Germans— is manifestly a mere modification of or improvement 
on the more or less highly concentrated barley wort that doubt- 
less abounded in England in those early days when every family 
* In his Dictionary of Arts, Manufactures, and Mines, 4th Edition, Boston, 
1853, I. 135. 
+ Ibid. 2. 778. 
