50 WRITINGS OF JAMES SMITHSON. 



In lumps it appears black, but in minute fragments it is 

 found to be transparent, and of a garnet-red colour. 



It burns with flame, and is reduced to white ashes. 



Alcohol dissolves it, but only in very small quantity. 



Water likewise dissolves it, but also only in very small 

 quantity. Acids cause a precipitate in this solution, though 

 this resin-like matter appears neither to contain any alkali, 

 nor to retain any of the acid by means of which it was 

 obtained. 



Its solution in water seems to redden turnsol paper. 



Neither ammonia, nor carbonate of soda, promote its 

 solution in cold water. 



On adding a small quantity of potash to water in which 

 it lies, it dissolves immediately and abundantly. This solu- 

 tion has all the qualities of a solution of ulmin, and, on 

 exhalation, leaves a matter precisely like it, which cracks 

 and separates from the glass, and docs not grow moist in the 

 air, &c. 



Hence it appears that ulmin is not a simple vegetable 

 principle of anomalous qualities, but a combination with 

 potash of a red, or more properly a high yellow matter, 

 which, if not of a peculiar genus, seems rather more related 

 to the extractives than to the resins. 



English Ulmin. 



I collected, from an elm tree in Kensington gardens, a 

 small quantity of a black shining substance which looked 

 like ulmin. 



It was readily soluble in water, and the solution was in 

 colour and appearance exactly similar to a solution of 

 ulmin. 



This solution, exhaled to a dry state on a water-bath, 

 left a matter exactly like ulrnin, and which cracked and 

 divided as ulmin does, when dried in the same manner. It 

 did not, however, rise up from the watch-glass in long 

 strips, like the Sicilian kind, but this may have been owing 



