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the stems of the fresh plant and as the number of these is not 
great, it was realised that the yield of oil would be small. An 
attempt was made to collect the oil on absorbent cotton wool, and 
then to recover it from the latter by steam distillation. This 
answered well for small quantities of plant, but it took up too much 
time and led to serious loss by volatilisation when quantities 
of more than 50 to 100 grammes of plant were worked up. 
It was therefore arranged that the two supplies of plant 
should be received from Kew as early as possible in the day 
and steam-distilled the same day. The distillation waters from 
the two lots of plants were again steam-distilled next day to 
concentrate the oil as far as possible but even then the distillation 
waters were only faintly cloudy and there was no actual 
separation of oil. They were therefore saturated with salt 
and extracted with ether, the ethereal solution dried, the solvent ~ 
distilled off, and the residue, after drying in a vacuous chamber 
at atmospheric temperature, weighed as oil. The yield of oil 
from lot a was 0°06 grammes and from lot 6 0-11 grammes, equal 
respectively to 0-001 and 0-0008 per cent. expressed on the plant 
as received. 
“The oil was brown in colour, had a consistence similar to 
that of soft paraffin, showed a tendency to crystallise when the 
vessel containing it was placed in ice and salt, and had the 
characteristic odour of the fresh plant. It was acid to litmus, 
and required 1-18 per cent. of its weight of caustic soda to 
neutralize it. The soluble sodium salt so formed was washed 
out with distilled water and the residual oil collected. It still 
had the characteristic odour of the fresh plant and was now 
boiled for one hour with alcoholic soda, the alcohol removed 
under a low pressure and the soluble sodium salt taken out by 
water as before. The residual oil was now a limpid yellow 
liquid which still had the characteristic odour of the plant but 
the amount remaining, 0:02 grammes, was too small to examine 
further. The solutions of sodium salts, removed as described 
above, when acidified deposited a crystalline solid and some 
resin; both of low melting point but too small in amount to 
examine. The portion remaining in solution was converted 
into a silver salt and on ignition yielded 42-6 per cent. of silver. 
i the quantity of silver salt only amounted to a few milligrammes, 
figure can only be a rough approximation but it may perhaps 
« taken as indicating the presence of lower fatty acids of about 
the complexity of octoic acid. 
“These results may be summarised as follows. The fresh 
plant yields about 0-001 per cent. of volatile oil, which so far as 
can be judged from the results of the experiment possible with so 
minute an amount of oil, consists largely of free acids and esters 
with possibly some phenolic substance. The constituent to which 
the characteristic odour of the plant is due is not an acid ester 
or phenol since it persists after these constituents have been 
removed or decomposed.” 
