486 



NA TURE 



[March 21, 1901 



"the history of no people can be said to have been 

 written so long as its superstitions and beliefs in past 

 times have not been studied ; and those who think that 

 the legends here recorded are childish and frivolous, 

 may rest assured that they bear on questions which could 

 not themselves be called either childish or frivolous." 



Further on he returns to the subject : 



" With regard to him," he says, " who looks at the col- 

 lecting and the studying of folk-lore as trivial work and a 

 waste of time, I should gather that he regards it so on 

 account, first perhaps, of his forgetting the reality their 

 superstitions were to those who believed in them ; and 

 secondly, on account of his ignorance of their meaning. 

 As a reality to those who believed in them, the supersti- 

 tions of our ancestors form an integral part of their 

 history. However, I need not follow that topic further 

 by trying to show how ' the proper study of mankind is 

 man,' and how it is a mark of an uncultured people not to 

 know or care about the history of the race. So the 

 Roman historian, Tacitus, evidently thought ; for, when 

 complaining how little was known as to the original 

 peopling of Britain, he adds the suggestive words ut 

 inter barbaros ' as usual among barbarians.' Conversely, 

 I take it for granted that no liberally educated man or 

 woman of the present day requires to be instructed as to 

 the value of the study of history in all its aspects, or to be 

 told that folk-lore cannot be justly called trivial, seeing 

 that it has to do with the history of the race — in a wider 

 sense, I may say, with the history of the human mind and 

 the record of its development." 



There are many scientific men who need to lay to heart 

 this protest. 



A full index is given, and a most useful bibliographical 

 list of references. E. Sidney Hartland. 



ALKALOIDS. 

 Die Pflanzen-Alkaloide. By Jul. Wilh. Briihl, Professor 

 in the University of Heidelberg, and Eduard Hjelt 

 and Ossian Aschan, Professors in the University of 

 Helsingfors. Pp. xxii-f586. (Brunswick: Friedrich 

 Vieweg und Sohn, 1900.) Price Mk. 14. 



THE progress that has been made in the rapidly 

 developing fields of organic chemistry can be best 

 estimated when recognised authorities, such as the 

 authors of the present volume, furnish chemists with 

 special monographs dealing with those groups of com- 

 pounds in which the writers can lay claim to an expert 

 knowledge. As a class the vegetable alkaloids, which 

 are dealt with in this volume, are of exceptional interest, 

 not only on account of their wide distribution as natural 

 products, but also because of their remarkable physio- 

 logical actions. It is interesting to note, in reading 

 through this admirable summary of the existing state of 

 knowledge in this branch of chemistry, what great strides 

 have been made towards a more definite conception of 

 the structure or " constitution " of the molecules of these 

 compounds within the last few years. At the present 

 time, the synthetical achievements in this field are not 

 numerous. The first complete synthesis of an alkaloid 

 was that of coniine by Ladenburg in 1886, followed soon 

 after by the synthesis of trigonelline by Hantzsch and 

 Jahns. The latter chemist succeeded in synthesising 

 arecoline in 1891, and the synthesis of piperine from 

 NO. 1638, VOL. 63] 



piperidine and piperic acid by Ladenburg and Scholtz in 

 1894 may be said to complete the list of total syntheses 

 thus far accomplished. But several partial syntheses 

 have to be recorded, viz. aconitine from aconine and 

 methyl benzoate, cocaine from ecgonine and benzoic 

 anhydride ; and one step towards the synthesis of 

 hydrastine was made in 1895 by Fritsch. . 



The effect of this more intimate knowledge of the 

 chemical constitution of the alkaloids is evident in the 

 classification adopted in the present work. It is, in fact, 

 now possible to refer large numbers of these compounds 

 to different groups, each group having a well-known 

 organic base as its parent form. Every one of the four 

 parent compounds, viz. pyrrolidine, pyridine, quinoline 

 and isoquinoline, are, it may be of interest to point out, 

 capable of being completely synthesised. A brief sketch 

 of the mode of treatment will enable our readers to form 

 an idea of the value of this monograph by Prof. Briihl 

 and his colleagues. 



The introductory chapter deals with the history, dis- 

 tribution, preparation and properties, modes of decom- 

 position, synthesis, physiological action, detection and 

 estimation, and other general considerations relating to 

 the group as a whole. This is followed by the chapter 

 on the alkaloids of the pyrrolidine group, which com- 

 prises the hygrines and cuskhygrine. The second 

 chapter contains an account of the alkaloids of the 

 pyridine group, the latter comprising twelve sub- 

 divisions trigonelline, the jaborandi alkaloids, areca 

 alkaloids, conium alkaloids, piperine, chrysanthemine, 

 nicotine, solanum bases such as atropine, hyos- 

 cyamine, tropacocaine, madragorine, &c. ; the alkaloids 

 of coca, the alkaloids of pomegranate root-bark, 

 sparteine and cytisine. The third chapter com- 

 prises the quinoline group, and, although divided into 

 only two subdivisions, is very rich in individual com- 

 pounds, since it includes the very numerous cinchona 

 alkaloids and those of the plants belonging to the genus 

 Strychnos. In the fourth chapter, the authors treat of the 

 alkaloids of the isoquinoline group, comprising more 

 than twenty opium alkaloids, hydrastine and canadine, 

 and the alkaloids of Berberis and Corydalis. 



The four chapters, the contents of which have been 

 briefly referred to, deal with those alkaloids which are 

 susceptible of chemical classification by virtue of our 

 knowledge of their constitution. Whether with the pro- 

 gress of chemical science any or all of these formulte may 

 not require modification — and many of them are con- 

 fessedly but tentative — does not affect the main question 

 as to the atomic complexes from which the various 

 alkaloids are derivable, and the reference of a particular 

 alkaloid to any one of the four groups may be looked 

 upon as a definite allocation of the compound with 

 reference to. its parent complex, whether the latter is 

 genetically connected with its derivative by actual 

 laboratory processes or whether the connection has only 

 been inferred by indirect methods. The remaining alka- 

 loids, which are distributed through the sixteen sub- 

 divisions constituting the fifth and last chapter, are, 

 however, classified botanically rather than chemically, 

 since their chemical constitution is unknown and only 

 empirical formulae can at present be assigned. Thus we 



