464 BULLETIN OF THE BUSSEY INSTITUTION. 
alcohol, so that a certain quantity of calcium or barium, as 
the case may be, will be found admixed with the organic matter. - 
To this cause I attribute the presence of notable quantities of 
inorganic matter in the syrups obtained by evaporating the neu- 
tralized liquors from the hydrolysis of woods and of cotton. In 
the experiments described on pages 448-450, it is evident that 
the processes employed for obtaining crystals and in testing for 
mucic acid, and those where the acid products of a first hydro- 
lysis were boiled a second time after the removal of the wood, 
did finally decompose the calcium and barium salts that were con- 
tained in the ‘‘ matter insoluble in alcohol,” and so liberated the 
sulphuric acid from its organic combination in such wise that it 
could now combine directly with calcium or with barium to form 
visible crystals or precipitates, as the case might be. 
I am familiar with the fact that more gypsum can be held dis- 
solved in solutions of sugar than in mere water. Sostmann* 
‘studied this matter in 1866, and I had myself noticed the fact 
several years earlier.f But it has seemed to me in the present 
experiments that the appearance of the crystals of gypsum, or 
what not, was a consequence of the decomposition of sulpho- 
compounds by which the gypsum, or rather its components, had 
previously been masked. 
IV. The statement of Béchamp,{ that on crystallizing his 
glucose from ‘‘lignin” (presumably cotton), he got ‘*two kinds 
of crystals, one hard as cane sugar, the other ‘ houppes,’ such as 
those of starch sugar,” is readily explained on the assumption 
that he had in hand crystals of inorganic matter which had 
resulted from the decomposition of the last portions of the calcium 
salt of the cellulose-sulphuric acid. In my own experiments I 
have, like Béchamp, obtained two kinds of crystals on evaporat- 
ing my glucose syrups; but, as has been said, the hard, well- 
defined prisms were not crystals of sugar, — they consisted solely 
of inorganic matter. 
V. Perhaps it was with reference to the foregoing statement 
* Zeitschrift des Vereins fiir die Riibenzuckerindustrie des deutschen 
Reiches. 16. 517. 
+ As stated in my ‘‘ First Outlines of a Dictionary of Solubilities of 
Chemical Substances,” Cambridge, 1864, page 608, column 1. 
t~ Annales de Chimie et de Physique. (2) 48. 502. 
