284 Professor Bra tub's Observations on 



Carbon 72.00 



Nitrogen 5.50 



Hydrogen 5.50 



Oxygen 17.00 



100.* 



When morphia is passed through a red-hot tube, it affords, as 

 might be expected, a considerable portion of aqueous vapour, and 

 when fused with potassium, or heated with it in naphtha, it manifests 

 a very evident action upon that metal. 



Strychnia. — The experiments which I have made upon this sub- 

 stance, induce me to regard it as resembling, in the nature of its 

 ultimate elements, the preceding salifiable bases, but I have had no 

 opportunity of ascertaining their relative proportions. 



The strychnia which I examined, prepared by M. Robiquet, of 

 Paris, was in small and imperfect octoedral crystals ; fusible as 

 morphia, of a bitter taste, and intensely so when combined with an 

 acid. Heated in a tube it decrepitates, fuses, becomes brown and 

 black, ammonia and water beiug at the same time evolved. There 

 can, therefore, be no doubt of the existence of carbon, nitrogen, 

 hydrogen, and oxygen, in this substance. 



It appears from the above experiments, that the peculiar salifi- 

 able bases, or alkaline substances, as they have been termed, 

 separable from opium, from the varieties of cinchona, and from the 

 Nux Vomica, resemble each other in containing nitrogen as a 

 characteristic component part, and that consequently, when burned, 

 they exhale an odour precisely resembling that of animal bodies, 

 and like them afford ammonia, and some of its compounds, when 

 subjected to distillation. There is another remarkable analogy 

 which pervades this class of bodies, as far as they have hitherto 



* M. Bussey, to whom we owe an analysis of morphia, gives the following 

 as its components -.—{Annils of Philosophy, vi. 229.) 



Carbon ... 69-0 



Nitrogen 4.5 



Hydrogen 6.5 



Oxygen oo, 



100 



