62 CAROTIXOIDS AND UK I.. WED PIG M i:\TS 



leaves, while Mi-- < ioerrig fir>t dried the leaves in the air at -10 C. 

 i protected of course from the liiihti. and then Around them tn a 

 powder, and (2i Tswett submitted hi.- pigments to confirmatory testa 

 for the various carotinoids (unfortunately omitting, however, a chro- 

 matonTaphir analysis i. while Mi-.- (ioerrig drew her conclusions solely 

 from a Krau- reparation between alcohol and petroleum ether. The 

 bearing of these difference- in procedure on the conclusions of the two 

 investigators, iv-pect ively. will he pointed out below. 



Inferring first to Tswett's inve-tiuation one finds that he plucked 

 the autumn yellow leaves "f 19 diffen nt plants during the ne.-rohiotic 

 period, and macerated them thoroughly with glass powder, or emery, 

 and MgO (to in-ure the absence of acid- in the extractsi and then 

 extracted the pulp with petroleum ether. This was followed by an 

 extraction with alcoholic petroleum ether. The latter wa- freed from 

 alcohol by wa-hing with water and the two extracts examined sepa- 

 rately both spectroscopically as well as with re-pert to their ad-oip- 

 tion by Ca('<> . and al-o as to their -cparation in the Krau-: proce- 

 dure, u-ing 80 per cent alcohol and petroleum ether. The lir-t extrac- 

 tion with petroleum ether alone -hoiild extract the carotin, if present, 

 and the -econd extraction with alcoholic petroleum ether should re- 

 move the xanthophyll-. hi addition, extractions were made of the 

 macerated leaves with alcohol alone, and these tested in the Kraus 

 system. The plant- examined by T-wett may be iound by referring 

 to Tables 1 and 2. 



The result of this study wa- to -how that, while traces of ehloro- 

 phyllins and normal carotinoids were pre-ent. the bulk of the pigment 

 of the yellow autumn leaves examined before the postmortal period 

 was a earotinoid-like pigment ior group of pigments) which was 

 almost completely adsorbed from petroleum ether by CaCO,, like the 

 xanthophylls. At the same time the pigment was epiphasie like caro- 

 tin, i.e., found in the petroleum ether layer in the Kraus reparation, in 

 all cases except the extract-" from the honey locust (Gl< : <Ht*i(i triti- 

 canthos) and the buckeye Llr.sr/////.s Hippocastanum) . Spectroscopi- 

 cally the pigment showed three absorption bands behind" F, but as their 

 position was somewhat variable no measurements were made. Tswett 

 called the pigments (he believed a mixture to be present) autumn 

 xanthophylls. Saponification did not alter their carotin-like property 

 of remaining for the most part in the petroleum ether layer in the 



8 The hypophasic portions of tbesc extracts were unfortunately not examined further 

 by Tswett. 



