20 E. DIVERS AND M. KAWAKITA 



coloured solution. In this way, that is, by continued boiling with 

 strong alcoholic potash, bird-lime has been attacked by both Personne 

 and ourselves, in order to determine its composition. 



The Constituents of bird-lime. 



Personne has found bird-lime, prepared from I. Aqnifolinm, to 

 contain water 27 , and vegetable debris and calcareous salts 23 parts per 

 cent., the remaining and essential part being some caoutchouc^ the 

 Compound ether, or ethers, of a new alcohol., and other matters undeter- 

 mined. The acids or acid forming the ethers were also not deter- 

 mined by him. He isolated the caoutchouc by saponifying the ethers 

 with alcoholic potash, which left it undissolved. 



Japanese bird-lime is much cleaner than that described by 

 Personne, containing only 2 per cent, of dry bark fragments, and 

 no separate lime salts. But its water-content is larger, (probably 

 because it is kept in stock underwater), the percentage lost at 110°- 

 120° being 38. Caoutchouc forms about 6 per cent., leaving 54 per 

 cent, as the proportion of compound ethers and allied matters. 



The bark, etc. — Of the 23 parts per cent, found in French bird- 

 lime by Personne, some 13 parts consisted of calcium oxalate. On 

 boiling out the bark fragments from Japanese bird-lime with sodium 

 carbonate, some oxalate was dissolved out but only in small quantity. 

 The bark burnt to ashes gave as much as 6.3 per cent, of ash, princi- 

 pally calcareous and largely phosphate, but with of course some 

 carbonate. But as the whole ash was only one-eighth per cent, of 

 the entire bird-lime, and as only a little of the calcium salts was 

 oxalate, Japanese differs, in this respect, remarkably from French 

 bird-lime. 



llie caoutchouc. — As we have stated, the caoutchouc can be sepa- 

 rated by boiling out the purified bird-lime with alcoholic potash, and 



