ASH. * 145 
phuric and nitric acids, and chlorine. There also occur in it 
silicium, sodium, manganese, aluminium, iodine, bromine, 
fluorine, lithium, and other elements.’ 
Plants rich in silicium (grasses, diatomer)—they contain it 
always in the membrane—leave upon incineration a so-called 
skeleton of silica.*, The Halophytes (salt-plants) especially con- 
tain sodium. Manganese is less extended, but is nevertheless 
found regularly, even though in small amount, for instance, in 
drugs from the family of Zingiberacex.* It suffices to reduce 
to ash a single seed of the cardamom, or a still smaller fragment 
of the fruit-capsule, by heating on the looped end of a plati- 
num wire in the oxidation flame of an ordinary alcohol lamp, and, 
if necessary, fusing with a little sodium carbonate and a trace 
of saltpeter, in order to obtain a bead which is colored green by 
the manganate of the alkali, and which when moistened with 
acetic acid affords the red permanganate. The same deport- 
ment is shown by the root-stocks of this family. The ash of 
ordinary cork (from Quercus suber) and that of other species of 
cork is also green from the same cause. 
Aluminium is of rare occurrence, but is found in not incon- 
siderable amounts in the leaves and stems of species of Lyco- 
podium, 
Lodine and bromine occur in the vegetable (and animal) 
?To interpret the composition of the ash is far more difficult. Weare 
not yet capable of explaining the great differences found therein accord- 
ing to some general law. A very extensive compilation of figures re-. 
lating to this subject may be found in Wolff’s ‘‘ Aschenanalysen von 
landwirthschaftlich wichtigen Produkten, Fabrikabfillen und wild 
wachsenden Pflanzen,” Berlin, 1871. . 
* Such skeletons may be prepared by warming small pieces of coarse, 
firm leaves with concentrated sulphuric or nitricacid and potassium 
chlorate, expelling the acid, and heating the residue upon platinum-foil 
(preferably in a current of oxygen) or upon a very thin cover-glass until 
it becomes white. Tissues which have not previously been treated in 
this manner often fuse together in consequence of the amount of alkali 
contained therein. 
*Flickiger, Pharm, Journ., III. (London, 1872), 208. Ibid., 1886, p. 
621; also Amer. Journ. Pharm, 1886, p. 147. 
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