146 Dr Anderson on the Properties of PicoUne. 



integuments. And in all animals, so far as any chemical 

 change is effected in the vital actions of absorption, secretion, 

 and even nutrition, it would appear to be chiefly of this sim- 

 ple kind, consisting in the selection and appropriation of com- 

 pounds already existing in the fluids on which these functions 

 are performed, not in the formation of new compounds. The 

 chyme which is found in the intestines of an animal during 

 digestion contains all the compounds (albuminous, fatty, and 

 extractive matters) which are found in the chyle absorbed 

 from it, although these are in a different state of aggregation, 

 and associated also with other matters which are not absorb- 

 ed. Since it has been ascertained that the compounds which 

 used to be thought peculiar to the greatest secretions in the 

 body, the bile and the urine, pre-exist in the blood, and are 

 only evolved at the liver and kidneys, — accumulating, there- 

 fore, in the blood, when the secretive action of these organs 

 is suspended, — it has become obvious that the main office 

 of these organs is not formative^ but only attractive ^ to ex- 

 tract from the blood compounds already existing there. And, 

 although there is one material extensively employed in the 

 formation of animal textures, viz., gelatin, which cannot be 

 detected in the blood ; yet, as this is the only material so 

 employed which cannot be found there, and as a substance 

 very closely resembling it is found there under certain cir- 

 cumstances, we may assert that in animals by far the greater 

 part of the act of nutrition, numerous and diversified as the 

 compounds forming the solid materials of animal bodies may 

 be, is likewise of this simple kind. 



(To be concluded in next Number.) 



On the Constitution and Properties of PicoUne, a new Organic 

 Base from Coal-Tar. By Thomas Anderson, M.D., 

 F.R.S.E., Lecturer "on Chemistry, Edinburgh. (From the 

 forthcoming volume of Transactions of the Royal Society 

 of Edinburgh).* 



The careful study of the products of destructive distillation 

 has enriched organic chemistry with an extensive series of 



* Read to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, on 20th April 1846. 



