BY J. M. PETRIE. 



817 



leaves of a number of different plants, and he terms them proto- 

 alkaloids. He believes the latter may form nearly all the 

 complex alkaloids by methylation, condensation, and ring 

 enlargement, as explained above. 



The norhyoscyamine molecule contains a reduced pyrrole and 

 a pyridine ring united togetlier; but the methylation of its 

 nitrogen atom, which is found to have taken place in almost all 

 the alkaloids, seems here to have been prevented. Only one 

 other such case is known— the alkaloids of the hemlock, coniine 

 and methylconiine— where there exist together, in the same 

 plant, two alkaloids differing from one another only as secondary 

 and tertiary bases, i.e., with the amino group and its methyl 

 derivative. Since, however, norhyoscyamine is always accom- 

 panied in plants by hyoscyamine, tlie methylation has been 

 arrested only partially,— to a small extent in the case of nor- 

 hyoscyamine, and to a very much larger amount in coniine. 



OCCUKKENCE OF NORHYOSCYAMINE. 



Norhyoscyamine has been disco\ered in five distinct members 

 of the Solanacese. Carr and Reynolds, by working on very large 

 quantities of material (over 100 kilos.), have isolated this new 

 base from the first four plants tabulated below. The D^tboisia 

 myoporoides was collected in the Philippine Islands, which is 

 probably the northern limit of this Eastern- Australian tree. 

 The Mandragora was investigated by Hesse.* 



* Hesse, Journ. f. prakt. Ohem., 64, 1901, 274. 



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