PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 83 
prisms often running into needles. The single crystals have but 
little effect upon the polarized ray, but where the solution has 
been concentrated (as from alcohol), and the acicular crystals are 
much overlaid, they present a good deal of colour. 
It is exceedingly difficult to say in what condition morphine 
exists in opium ; we are well aware that it has been set down as 
meconate, with a smaller per-centage of sulphate, but we have 
reason to suspect that sulphate is present to a larger extent than 
is generally supposed. The messing and manipulation which all 
kinds of opium appear to undergo before they reach this country, 
renders the belief which is suggested by other circumstances, that 
a portion of the meconie acid is decomposed, extremely probable. 
It is scarcely likely that a substance which even boiling water 
decomposes, evolving carbonic acid, should remain unchanged 
through the various treatments to which the drug is subjected. 
Meconate of Morphine is set down in chemical works as being 
uncrystallizable, a statement to be accepted with reservation ; for 
by careful manipulation peculiar conical crystals may be obtained 
either from the solution of the commercial salt in dilute alcohol, 
or by the evaporation of mixed solutions of morphia and meconic 
acid. These crystals do not resemble any which are found on 
evaporating opium solutions; but, as we have said, the subject 
requires more investigation than we have as yet been able to give 
to it. 
Sulphate of Morphine takes the form of small flat-ended prisms; 
with a strong tendency to collect in radiating tufts; the larger 
flat erystals only polarized. 
Codeine crystallizes in octahedra running into four-sided prisms. 
In the octahedral condition it is not easily mistaken for any other 
of the opium alkaloids, but the prisms strongly resemble those of 
narcotine. 
They may be distinguished by their not presenting the fluted 
or striated surface which crystals of narcotine have, and by their 
much less striking effect on the ray of polarized light. 
Narcotine occurs in the form of prisms, with oblique one or 
two-faced ends. As above stated, the surface of the crystals is 
fluted or striated, and on pressure they break np into tolerably 
regular smaller crystals. Owing to a sort of composite structure, 
they have very marked effect on the polarized ray, more striking 
indeed than any other of the opium principles. Were it not for 
this property, they would be distinguished with great difficulty 
from many other crystalline substances which they resemble in 
form. There is a tendency, as in other cases, to cluster together 
in more or less radiating tufts, but the individual erystals still 
keep their shape and do not degenerate into mere radiating 
plumose needles, like those of narceine. 
Narceine.—As narceine exists in opium in about the same per- 
centage, on the average, as morphia and narcotine, it is of greater 
consequence in these investigations than it is ina medical point of 
