116 On Oriental Bezoars. 
duced into charcoal and consumed like the rest. The twelve 
grammes of bezoar left in the retort 4°320 grammes of 
charcoal, which produced upon incineration 0°600 grammes ~ 
of ashes, which when washed with water left on evapora- 
tion a residue formed of crystals, but so confused, and in 
so small a quantity, that their nature could not be. distin= 
guished: they were re-dissolved, and we ascertained by the 
nitrate of silver, the muriate of barytes, and the solution of 
platina, that it could be nothing but sulphate of soda with 
a small proportion of muriate of soda. 5 
The residue from the lixiviation was submitted to the 
a¢tion of the weak muriatic acid: the whole was dissolved 
with effervescence, excepting 0°086 grammes of silex: the 
muriatic solution gave by means of ammonia a precipitate, 
which when collected on a filter and properly dried weighed 
0°095 grammes: it appeared to be phosphate of lime; after 
wards the carbonate of soda formed a precipitate, which, 
being dried, weighed 0°151,, and which was carbonate of 
lime: Joss 0098. A second operation gave.nearly similar 
products. 
We see by the foregoing analysis that bezoars, such as 
the above, have no resemblance to other animal concretions, 
and that they give precisely the products of vegetable sub- 
' stances, and particularly those of wood. 
Like wood they yield a great proportion of charcoal, and 
they present the greatest analogy to it when we submit 
them to the action of water, alcohol, the acids; but most 
of all the alkalis. I shall here quote a passage from Thom- 
son’s Chemistry, in which he describes the properties of 
the ligneous substance: ‘This substance is insoluble in 
water and alcohol: the fixed alkalis give it with the assist- 
ance of heat a deep brown colour: they soften and decom- 
pose it: a weak alkaline solution dissolves it without alter- 
ing its nature, and we may again precipitate it by an acid. 
This property renders wood susceptible of being easily se- 
parated from most other vegetable substances, since there 
are very: few which are soluble in'the weak alkaline lixivia.”” 
We recognise, therefore, in the bezoar the ligneous sub- 
stance with which the animal is fed: this concretion can 
only he formed in the stomach; for if it were produced in 
the intestines, we could not find in it pieces of straw in 
such good preservation: it would have received some al- 
teration in its vegetable nature, and would be impregnated 
with some animal matter. 
We should say that the softened, and as it were dissolved 
ligneous substance is consolidated again around a neny 
which 
