Leaves from the Ship Canal. 231 



On the Green Colouring Matter from Leaves found in 

 one of the Cuttings for the Manchester Ship Canal. 

 By Edward Schunck, Ph.D., F.R.S. 



{Received April 2jtJi, i88g.) 



At the Meeting of the Society held on March 19th, Mr. 

 William Thomson read a paper on a deposit of leaves 

 found at a depth of about 21 feet in one of the cuttings for 

 the Ship Canal, near Irlam. Mr. Thomson stated that he 

 had been able to extract from these leaves a green colour- 

 ing matter, the solutions of which showed the absorption 

 bands of chlorophyll. 



Having myself paid some attention to the subject of 

 chlorophyll, I feel an interest in any new fact relating to it. 

 Some confirmation of Mr. Thomson's statement seemed 

 desirable, since chlorophyll, as everyone knows, is one of 

 the most fugitive and easily decomposed of natural colour- 

 ing matters, and it seemed improbable, therefore, that it 

 should have been preserved unchanged within the vegetable 

 tissue during the long period that these leaves are said to 

 have lain underground. 



Having expressed a wish to make a few experiments 

 myself, Mr. Thomson very kindly placed at my disposal 

 some of the material employed by him, and an additional 

 quantity was supplied to me by Mr. Mead King, engineer 

 over that section of the canal where the deposit was found. 



My examination is not to be considered exhaustive. I 

 merely wished to ascertain whether the colouring matter 

 referred to was chlorophyll, and, if not, whether it was in 

 any way related to the latter. The material was treated at 

 once with boiling alcohol, which extracted the whole of the 



