BULLETIN OF THE BUSSEY INSTITUTION. 443 
B. Acid Hydrolysis of Wood from the Root of a Sugar Maple 
Tree. — A root, from an inch to an inch and a half in thickness, 
was dug up in November at West Newfield, Maine. The bark 
was stripped off and the wood ground to powder. A quantity of 
the powdered wood was soaked in strong ammonia water during 
24 hours, and then thrown upon a filter and washed with water. 
The wood thus leached with ammonia was dried at 100° and sub- 
jected to hydrolysis as follows: .Seven grams of the dry residue 
were boiled for three hours in 200 ¢.c. of hydrochloric acid of 
3%, and the undissolved residue was separated by filtration. 
One half of the liquid was neutralized with sodium hydroxide, 
evaporated, and decolorized with bone-black. It gave quasi 
(a) D = 59°.26, and there was shown by Fehling’s liquor 23.04% 
of ‘*sugar” (calculated as dextrose) in the dry root wood that 
had been leached with ammonia. 
The other half of the acid filtrate was boiled three hours longer, 
and then neutralized with sodium hydroxide and decolorized with 
bone-black. The approximate specific rotation in this case was 
quasi(a) D = 68°.21, and the ‘‘ dextrose” shown by Fehling’s 
liquor was equal to 16.30% of the dry wood that had been leached 
with ammonia. 
Both the higher rotation observed in these two trials of root 
wood and the larger percentage of dextrose, as compared with the 
corresponding experiments with trunk wood, are explained by 
the fact that the wood of the maple root contained much more 
starch than the trunk wood did. While the latter was well nigh 
absolutely devoid of starch, the root wood when tested with barley 
malt showed as much as from 5 to 7% of ‘*starch and sugar,” 
i. e. matters capable of reducing copper from Fehling’s liquor. 
Indeed, on merely boiling some of the powdered root with succes- 
sive portions of water, enough reducing matter was dissolved to 
indicate 4.12% of sugar (‘‘dextrose’”’) when tested with Fehling’s 
liquor, while the trunk wood gave no indication of starch when 
thus tested. Under the microscope also much more starch was 
found in the root wood than in the trunk wood.* All of which 
* My colleague, Mr. E. W. Morse, who was good enough to examine the 
specimens, noticed much blue coloration on testing the maple root wood with 
iodine, although he obtained no reaction for starch, either in the outer or 
inner wood or in the bark of the trunk of a maple tree that had been felled 
