Royal Society, 53V 



highly probable that on these occasions organic bases would also be 

 produced. Beans, oil-cake and flesh, were therefore successively 

 boiled in a distilling apparatus with strong alkaline lyes. In every 

 instance, in addition to ammonia, a series of organic bases was also 

 produced. Similar results were also obtained when the above-men- 

 tioned substances were digested in strong sulphuric acid, the acid 

 solution supersaturated with an alkali and subjected to distillation. 

 The ammoniacal liquor which passed into the receiver was found 

 invariably to contain organic bases. 



Bases by putrefaction. — As putrefaction is almost the only other 

 means by which ammonia is readily procurable in quantity from 

 vegetable and animal substances, the effects of this process were also 

 examined in the first instance in the case of guano. An aqueous 

 solution of Peruvian guano was saturated with carbonate of soda 

 and distilled. In addition to much ammonia, a quantity of basic oils 

 was also obtained. Subsequent to this experiment the effects of putre- 

 faction on a quantity of horse-flesh were also examined, when a con- 

 siderable amount of oily bases was found to have been generated. 



From the facts which have now been enumerated, the author con- 

 cludes '■^that whenever ammonia is generated in large quantity from 

 complex animal or vegetable substances, it is invariably accompanied 

 by the formation of a larger or a smaller amount of volatile organic 

 bases." If therefore researches similar to the present are actively 

 prosecuted, and if the seeds and leaves of the various genera of plants 

 are subjected to these or analogous processes, it seems not unreason- 

 able to expect that the number of the organic alkaloids will ere long 

 be considerably increased. 



"On the Development and Varieties of the Great Anterior 

 Veins in Man and Mammalia." By John Marshall, Esq. Commu- 

 nicated by Professor Sharpey, F.R.S. 



The object of this paper is to state the result of observations on 

 the metamorphosis of the great anterior veins in Man and Mam- 

 malia, and on the relations existing between the primitive and final 

 condition of these vessels, in different cases, both in their normal 

 arrangement in animals, and their abnormal condition in the human 

 subject.^ 



From an examination of the form and structure of the sinus of the 

 great coronary vein, and of the arrangement of its branches and 

 valves in Man and some of the Mammalia, and from a comparison 

 of those parts with the terminations of the great coronary and other 

 posterior cardiac veins in the other Mammalia, the coronary sinus 

 in Man and one set of Mammals, as the Dog, Cat, and Seal, is shown 

 to be analogous to the loiver part of the left vena cava anterior found 

 in another set, represented by the Elephant, Rabbit and Hedgehog, 

 and to the lower part of the left vena azygos, found in a third set, as 

 exemplified in the Sheep, Ox and Pig. The great coronary vein, 

 therefore, is shown always to end in a similar way, viz. in a larger 

 muscular venous channel, which, in all cases, ends in the right auri- 

 cle of the heart, by a wide orifice situated in an exactly correspond- 

 ing part of that cavity. 



