70 Tea-plant.— 'Bile. 



Kien Long, containing drawings of upwards of nine hundred 

 antique vases resembling those denominated Etruscan. Several 

 appear to be of very remote antiquity. 



M. Deschamps, an agriculturist and botanist of Lausanne, has 

 announced to the Society of Agriculture, Natural History, and 

 useful Arts, of Lyons, some interesting experiments on the culture 

 of the tea plant of Japan, and which convinced him that it will 

 succeed perfectly well in Europe, if care be taken to sow it in a 

 proper soil and climate. 



M. Deschamps accompanied his paper with directions to 

 gather and prepare the plant for use. Having analysed it, he 

 discovered that it contained neither tannin nor gallic acid, prin-r 

 ciples which common tea contains, and to which is ascribed the 

 property of affecting the nerves, and occasioning tremulous sen- 

 sations. The disagreeable taste which some persons find in the 

 tea of Japan has been also corrected by M. Deschamps, by throw- 

 ing boiling hot water over the leaves, pouring it off in two or three 

 minutes, and then infusing them in bulling water in the usual way. 



M. Vogel has ascertained by several experiments that sulphur 

 exists in the bile and in the blood*. After adverting to the 

 opinions of various chemists, M. Vogel thus describes his ex- 

 periments : " Being convinced that if the bile contained albumen 

 it must contain sulphur also, which is a combustible body that 

 generally accompanies this substance, I introduced two kilor 

 grammes of fresh ox bile into a large glass retort j in the neck of 

 the retort I placed some slips of white paper saturated with a so- 

 lution of acetate of lead, adding a tubulated bell glass furnished 

 with a curved tube, which entered into a flask filled with a solu- 

 tion of acetate of lead, and boiled the bile. In a few minutes 

 the paper at the neck of the retort became sensibly black, and 

 was covered with a metallic coating like galena. In the flask 

 containing the solution of acetate of lead, carbonate of lead was 

 at first formed, and a little sulphuret of lead was afterwards de- 

 posited. The disengagement of carbonic acid, according to 

 M. Thenard, must be ascribed to a decomposition of the bile, 

 or rather to the carbonate of soda which it contains. 



" The blood also contains sulphur in the state of hydro- 

 sulphuret of ammonia, according to Proust. We may convince 

 ourselves of this, even without distillation ; it being only necessary 

 to cover a flask containing blood with paper saturated with 

 acetate of lead, and expose it to a temperature of 25 or 30 of the 

 centigrade thermometer : in a few days the paper becomes black, 



* A/males de Chimie, tome Ixxxvii. p. 915. 



and 



