396 | APOCYNACER, 
bark in 1858, and gave a short deseri ption of it in the Transac- 
tions of the Medical and Physical Society of Bombay (New 
Series, IV., 38). He proposed to call it Conessine, and calcu- 
lated, from the analysis of the free base, and of the platinum salt, 
the formula C*5H?2NO. The seeds have recently been 
again investigated by Herr Warnecke (Berichte, XIX., 60), 
who has obtained from them a crystalline alkaloid by exhaust- 
ing them with ether containing a little hydrochloric acid, 
digesting the extract with water and precipitating with 
ammonia, washing the yellow flocculent precipitate with water, 
and then after drying it over sulphuric acid dissolving it in — 
petroleum spirit and evaporating. The pure alkaloid is de- 
scribed as occurring in delicate colourless anhydrous needles, 
- 
having a bitter taste, becoming yellow at 60° to 70° C., and 
melting at 122°C. The alkaloid readily forms salts with acids, 
the hydrochlorate being crystalline. It is difficultly soluble in 
water, but freely soluble in alcohol, ether, chloroform, petrolenm 
spirit, benzol, amyl alcohol, and carbon bisulphide. An ana- 
lysis gave figures corresponding with the formula C!!H'!®N. 
Herr Warnecke therefore claims that this base, for which 
he prefers the name “‘ Wrightine ”’ is the first discovered solid 
non-oxygenated alkaloid occurring in nature ; in this, however, - 
he is hardly correct, since the formula C*°H?° N* was attri- 
buted in 1861 to a base isolated by Rieth from the bark of 
Arariba rubra (Annalen, CXX., 247), which was also obtained 
crystalline. 
Rather curiously, but simultaneously with the publication of 
the above-mentioned communication, another appeared by 
Messrs. Polstorff and Schirmer (Beriehte, XIX., 78), which 
described the results of the chemical examination of a bark 
forwarded from Tropical Africa by German missionaries asa _ 
_ remedy against dysentery, and referred to Holarrhena africana, 
DC. They report that they have isolated from this bark minute 
proportions (one-tenth per cent.) of an alkaloid that they con- 
sider to be identical with that separated by Professor Haines 
from East Indian conessi bark ; and they attribute to it charac- : 
ters closely —— ee described by Herr Warnockars as 
