34. BULLETIN OF THE BUSSEY INSTITUTION. 
From fresh beech-wood, for example, Wiegleb obtained 1%, of ashes; 
and, in these ashes, he found 16.28%, of salts soluble in water, or 16.09 %, 
of carbonate of potash; while upon the other hand, he found that he 
could leach out 0.67% of ash ingredients from beech-wood saw-dust 
by boiling it repeatedly with fresh portions of water, and squeezing the 
mass in a press after each of the boilings. One half of the weight of the 
ashes of the filtered extract in question were still soluble in water, after 
the organic matters of the extract had been destroyed by ignition. From 
the ashes of the leached saw-dust, Wiegleb got no alkali salt, on digest- 
ing with water; but, on evaporating this water, he obtained four grains 
of residue (from the ashes of two pounds of the leached wood), which 
consisted of carbonate of lime and a trace of sulphate. Most of this 
lime had dissolved as caustic lime, as Wiegleb is at pains to show. 
So, too, Marggraf* obtained 50 grains of ashes and 10 grains of pot- 
ashes (i.e., salts soluble in water) to the pound of beech-wood proper; 
while from leached beech-wood he got only 37 grains of ashes and 3 grains 
of potashes for each pound of the material taken. By the examination 
of a great variety of herbs, Wiegleb ¢ proved, furthermore, that a consid- 
erable proportion of the potash in the stalks and leaves of plants may 
usually be extracted by means of water. Similar results were obtained 
by John f also, who worked upon elder pith, the pith of sunflower stems, 
and the needles of coniferous trees. Operating upon the pith of dry sun- 
flower stalks, he found that it gave 3.519% of ash, more than half of 
which was soluble in water; but on leaching a quantity of the pith with 
water, and burning the residual pith, he got only 1.279% of ash, which 
consisted of ‘‘ carbonate and phosphate of lime, together with some oxide 
of iron, and traces of potash.’’ Among the matters that had been dis- 
solved from the pith by the water, he found a comparatively large 
amount of saltpetre, as well as some chloride, sulphate, phosphate, malate, 
and citrate of potassium. He found, moreover, that the proportion of 
alkali in the fresh pith, taken by itself, was much larger than it was in 
the whole stem; 7.e., when the pith and shell were taken together. With 
elder-pith, on the contrary, he got a different result. By means of water 
alone, he was unable to dissolve any considerable proportion of alkali 
from the pith, though on using acidulated water he extracted the potash 
wellnigh completely. 
De Saussure § found, like his predecessors, that less ashes can be got 
from leaves that have been washed repeatedly with water than from the 
unwashed materials. He proved anew that the alkali-salts are removed 
in larger proportion from plants by such washing than the other ash 
ingredients, and that, next to the alkali-salts, the phosphates of lime and 
* Cited in Leuchs, “‘ Der Potaschen-Fabrikant,” Niirnberg, 1844, p. 26. 
t Op. cit., pp. 110-124. 
¢ See his “ Ernaihrung der Pflanzen,” Berlin, 1819, pp. 54-61. 
§ In his “ Recherches Chimiques sur la Végétation,” 1804, pp. 279, 287, 293, 
and 297. 
