119 



Ammonia was obtained either by treating aniline with nitrous acid, 

 or by the action of nitrate of potash on the chloride, or by leading 

 the binoxide of nitrogen into a solution of the nitrate ; the latter 

 was the way generally employed. After about twelve hours' action 

 of NO 2 on a solution of the nitrate in a water-bath, the solution 

 was filtered from the nitrophenassic acid, and distilled with potash, 

 the distillate treated with ether to dissolve out the aniline, redistilled 

 in hydrochloric acid, evaporated, and the ammonia determined as 

 platinum salt. These results have led me to try the action of 

 nitrous acid on other organic bases, and I have already obtained from 

 ethylaniline a base which to all appearance is ethylamin. The 

 chloride gives off, when heated with potash, an alkaline inflammable 

 gas, and the platinum salt resembles that of ethylamin ; but the 

 platinum determination made with it does not agree very well with 

 that salt. I am now repeating the reaction on a larger scale, so that 

 I shall shortly be able to see whether it is really ethylamin or not. 



The foregoing experiments were carried out in the Royal College 

 of Chemistry under the direction of Professor Hofmann. 



III. " On the Existence of Amorphous Starch in a new Tuber- 

 aceous Fungus." By FREDERICK CURREY, Esq., M.A. 

 Communicated by JOSEPH D ALTON HOOKER, M.D., F.R.S. 

 Received December 17, 1857. 



Amorphous starch (including under that term all starch not in 

 the form of the ordinary starch-granule) is rare in the vegetable 

 world. Until the present year Schleiden was the only botanist by 

 whom it had been noticed, and his observations have been doubted 

 by Sanio, Caspary, and Schenk. He (Schleiden) states (Grundziige, i. 

 181) that he has seen amorphous starch in the form of a thin pasty 

 layer in the cells of the albumen of Cardamomum minus, in Sarsaparilla, 

 and in the rhizome of Carex arenaria. Sanio* has just published 

 the result of some experiments made by him upon the cells of the 

 epidermis of Gagea lutea. Upon applying a solution of iodine to 

 these cells, he observed a fine flocculent blue precipitate in their in- 

 terior. The blue colour was confined to the fluid contents of the 

 * Bot. Zeitung, 19th June, 1857. 



