ON SOME VEGETABLE ALKALOIDS. 45 
fuses and gives off, first water, then acid vapours, and finally, with intumescence 
and blackening, alkaline fumes of & very nauseous odour, which also affect the 
throat most unpleasantly. 
Its aqueous solution gives, with that of mercuric chloride, a heavy white pre- 
cipitate, which is difficultly soluble in boiling water, and is deposited in the cold 
in very small and separate crystals ; these seem, when magnified, to be prisms and 
octahedra ; it furnishes, with chloride of gold, an insoluble amorphous yellow pre- 
cipitate. With bichloride of platinum a pale yellow uncrystalline precipitate is 
obtained, but this could not, in three trials, be obtained of constant composition ; 
the platinum came always much too high, even above that of the strychnine salt 
itself, in two cases, by 0:3 to 0°7 per cent. 
Bichromate of Amylostrychnine.—This salt was obtained from the mother liquor 
of salt II. above, by addition of bichromate of potass ; it fell as a crystalline yellow 
salt, soluble in boiling water; when ignited, it gave the following result :— 
6°418 grains, dried at 212°, gave 
oi06s +++ sesquioxide of chromium. 
The percentage of anhydrous chromic acid corresponding to this number is 19°63 ; 
and 19-37 is that required by a salt, analogous to that of the ethyl base, of the 
formula— 
Cyo Hyg Ny 0, CrO,, H CrO,. 
There exists also a crystalline chromate. 
Nitrate of Amylostrychnine—This was prepared from the crystals of the chlo- 
ride I., by double decomposition with nitrate of silver in warm liquids. It is more 
soluble than the corresponding salt of ethylostrychnine ; but it is by no means of 
~ great solubility in cold water, though readily taken up in the heat. It crystallizes 
from hot water in very beautiful radiated groups of colourless needles; the ana- 
lysis of these gave the numbers which follow :-— 
3°695 grains, dried at 212°, gave 
8-850 ... carbonic acid, and 
2.415 ... water. 
Found. Calculation. 
—————— 
Carbon, . . . 65:32 65-54 C5. 312 
Hydrogen, . . 7:26 7:14 ay 34 
Nitrogen,. . . 8-82 N, 42 
Oxygen, . . . 18-50 0,, 88 
100-00 476 
and it appears that this salt is also not anhydrous at 212", its formula being— 
Cj. H,, N, 0, NO, + HO. 
