198 BULLETIN OF THE BUSSEY INSTITUTION. 
burns may have had some influence upon the amount of phosphoric acid 
in the ashes. As is well known, the combustion of pitch-pine wood is 
difficult after the first flaming due to the distillation of the resinous 
matters that is contained in the wood. The wood itself smoulders away 
slowly without evolving much heat. The ashes numbered V. contained 
a noteworthy amount of manganese, which undoubtedly vitiated the re- - 
sults obtained by the uranium process. It was noticed from the first that 
this sample of ashes evolved chlorine.on being heated with chlorhydric 
acid, and that during the fusion with chlorate of potash a very consider- 
able quantity of manganese oxide separated out. 
The carbonic acid set free from 3 or 4 grms. of the ashes, by means of 
diluted chlorhydric acid, was collected in potash bulbs and soda-lime tubes, 
and weighed, as such, after Kolbe.* To estimate the sand and charcoal 
5 grm. samples of the ashes were treated with a cold mixture of equal 
volumes of concentrated chlorhydric acid and water, and the mixture 
was filtered rapidly as soon as the action of the acid upon the ashes 
seemed to have ceased. 
The average amount of potash (about 84 per cent) found in the 
foregoing samples of wood-ashes from domestic fires, agrees tolerably 
well on the whole with the results of previous analysts, and with the 
practical experience of potash-makers, though it is rather less than - 
might perhaps have been expected from a comparison of the best 
analyses that have been carried out hitherto from the purely scientific 
point of view.T ; 
But with regard to phosphoric acid there are noteworthy differences 
between the results recorded in the table above and those that have 
been obtained previously by chemists. With a single exception, 
decidedly less phosphoric acid has been found in the samples of house- 
hold ashes examined in this laboratory than has hitherto been sup- 
posed to exist in wood-ashes. I have searched with some care for 
published determinations that should corroborate those given above, 
but have found very few such.{ Some of the results of this search 
* Fresenius’s ‘‘ Quantitative Analysis,” p. 294. 
+ Compare the table on page 207. 
t The few analyses of commercial ashes that have been published hitherto 
agree tolerably well with my own results. Thus Heiden, in his “ Diingerlehre,” 
2.231, reports that a sample of fir ashes, bought and analyzed by him, contaired 
8.15% of potash, 20.72% of carbonic acid, 31.24% of sand and charcoal, and 
2.42%, of phosphoric acid. Th. Dietrich (Hoffmann’s “Jahresbericht,” 1867, 
10.207) found 5.6% of potash and 3.1% of phosphoric acid in a sample taken 
from a large quantity of ashes, mostly from beech-wood, that had been bought 
up from house to house; and Wicke (Hoffmann’s “Jahresbericht,” as’ just 
