16 PHYSIOLOGICAL ACTION OF DAPHNANDRA REPANDULA. 
contact with the extract. Small fresh water fish and tadpoles 
soon die when placed in water containing a little of the extract. 
Topically applied to voluntary and involuntary muscle, nerves, 
cilia of frog’s pharynx, or gill of mussel, thin skinned insects, and 
infusoria it paralyses them rapidly. The motion of cilia can be 
examined with the naked eye in Ctenophora; when these are 
placed in water containing Daphnandra in solution, they cease 
from the first to protrude their tentacles or swim about, the motion 
of the cilia gets slower and weaker until it stops. 
The addition of half a grain of extract to the ounce of beef 
infusion retards the appearance in it of bacteria for several days, 
and prevents it becoming putrid for a week at a temperature 
ranging between 60° and 80° F. It has the power to deoderise 
putrid meat. 
It prevents to a considerable extent the blue colour that fresh 
tincture of guaiacum strikes when applied to the cut surface of a 
potato. It prevents yeast from budding for some dayg, and kills 
such water plants as Lemna and Conferva. Careful experiments 
on dogs more especially to ascertain the effect of this substance 
on the blood pressure have yet to be performed. I have hopes 
that this plant and others of the same genus may prove to be of 
value medicinally. 
Daphnandra micrantha, Lenth., growing in the scrubs about 
Brisbane contains the same alkaloids. The alkaloid soluble in 
water is the active principle, agreeing in action with the extract. 
A salt of that portion of fhe mixed alkaloids soluble in ether 
causes sometimes well marked tetanic spasms in frogs, not of so 
violent a kind, nor of so long duration as those of strychnine. 
Finally it paralyses the spinal chord and stops the heart in systole ; 
large doses of it are, however, required to kill frogs—one or more 
grains of the sulphate. Sometimes paralysis takes place without 
any tetanic spasms ; the amount of dose cannot account for the 
different action. This has led me to suspect that it is a mixture 
of alkaloids having antagonistic effects. A salt of that portion of 
the mixed alkaloids which is insoluble in ether and water appears 
to have no pronounced physiological action. 
I have to thank Mr. K. T. Staiger, F.L.S., for his kindness in 
explaining some obscure points respecting the decomposition of 
alkaloidal tannates, which arose in connection with the chemical 
part of this investigation. 
