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BULLETIN OF THE BUSSEY INSTITUTION. 419 
total sugar (dextrose) in the dry fruit. This really enormous 
proportion of saccharine matter is the more remarkable when it is 
considered that all the seeds of the fruit were present in the matter 
examined; none of them had been removed in the process of dry- 
ing. As Stone has remarked, dried strawberries might be made 
to serve many useful purposes were it not for the fact that it is 
far from easy to dry this fruit rapidly or cheaply. 
E. Quere:— As to the presence of Xylan in the membranous 
covering of the Starch Grain?— Many distinguished observers 
have affirmed while others have denied the existence of cellulose 
in or upon the starch grain. The chief reason for the affirmation 
seems to be the visible presence upon the grains of a membranons 
covering, somewhat less soluble than starch, which may be isolated 
by the exhibition of appropriate solvents, while the denial is based 
on the fact that the membrane dissolves rather easily in hydrolytic 
agents, 7. e. much more readily than cellulose is seen to dissolve in 
ordinary experience. 
But starch on being distilled with hydrochloric acid of 1.06 sp. 
gr. always yields a certain small proportion of furfurol. In this 
laboratory as much as 1.2% of it have been obtained from maize 
starch, which would be the equivalent of some 2% of pentosans in 
that starch, and it seems more’ than probable that this furfurol 
must be derived from the membrane of the starch grains rather 
than from the starch itself. Hence the inference that the supposed 
‘¢ cellulose” of starch may really be a compound of xylan — pos- 
sibly of xylan and galactan? It is to be noted withal that there 
is a marked difference between starch and a number of common 
organic substances, in that while small quantities of furfurol are 
obtainable from starch and from the purer kinds of cellulose also 
—such as cotton* and Swedish filter paper — practically no fur- 
furol at all can be got from albuminoids, fats, ete. Gtinther, de 
Chalmot and Tollenst obtained’ only imponderable traces of fur- 
* According to Cross and Bevan —=in their book entitled ‘+ Cellulose,” 
London, 1895, p. 255—the ordinary bieached celluloses of the cotton group 
all give a small proportion of furfurol (0.3 to 1%) on being boiled with hydro- 
chlorice acid of 1.06 sp. gr. 
Suringer and Tollens (Journal fiir Landwirthschaft. 1896, 44. 355) also 
obtained but little furfurol from cotton. 
t+ Berichte der deutschen chemischen Gesellschaft. 1892, 25. 2571. 
