Dumas, in his lecture on “ the chemical statics of organized beings,” 
remarks on azote :—‘ This azote, fixed by plants, seems therefore to 
produce a concrete fibrinous substance, which constitutes the rudiment 
of all the organs of the vegetable. It also serves to produce the liquid 
albumen which the coagulable juices of all plants contain, and the 
caseine so often confounded with albumen, but so easy to recognize in 
many plants. Fibrine, albumen, and caseine, exist then in plants. 
These three products, identical in their composition, as M. Vogel has 
long since proved, offera singular analogy with the ligneous matter, the 
amidon and the dextrine. a 
“Indeed, fibrine is like ligneous matter, insoluble—albumen, like 
starch, coagulates by heat—caseine, like dextrine, is soluble. These 
azotized matters moreover are neutral, as well as the three parallel 
non-azotized matters ; and we shall see that by their abundance in the 
animal kingdom, they act the same part that these latter exhibited to us 
in the vegetable kingdom. Besides, in like manner, as it suffices for the 
formation of non-azotized neutral matters, to unite carbon with water 
or with its elements, so also for the formation of these azotized neutral 
matters, it suffices to unite carbon and ammonium with the elements of 
water—48 molecules of carbon, 6 of ammonium, and 17 of water, 
constitute or may constitute, fibrine, albumen, and caseine. 
” Thus im: nat: gg reduced bodies, carbon or ammonium and wa- 
ter, f the matters which we are considering, and 
their production enters quite naturally into the circle of reactions, which 
vegetable nature seems especially adapted to produce. The function 
of azote in plants is therefore worthy of the most serious attention, 
~ _since it is this which serves to form the fibrine, which is found as the 
rudiment in all the organs—since it is this which serves for the produc- 
tion of the albumen and caseine, so largely diffused in so niany plants, 
and which animals assimilate or modify according to the exigencies of 
their own nature. 
“Tt is in plants then that the true laboratory of organic chemistry re- 
sides; thus carbon, hydrogen, ammonium and water are the principles 
Which plants elaborate : ligneous matter, starch, gums, and sugar, on 
the one part—fibrine, albumen, caseine, and gluten, on the other, are 
then the fundamental products of the two kingdoms ; products formed 
in plants, and in plants alone, and transferred by digestion into animals.” 
—Lond. Edin. and Dub. Jour. No. 126, Dec. 1841. 
11. Ott of Tedtile tora —This oil is obtained in the course of the 
— of making whiskey. It rises in the mash-tubs and is found in 
| “* We are indebted to our friend Chas. als eof rice. Six dan caine 
tion of this notice —Eps. 
