84 ANIMAL BASES. 



odorin. Examine what comes over from time to time, by letting 

 a drop of it fall into water. As long as it dissolves complete- 

 ly in the water, it is pure odorin, but as soon as it begins to ren- 

 der the water muddy, we may conclude that animin is coming 

 over also. We must then change the receiver that we may not 

 injure the purity of the odorin, which has already distilled over. 

 If we continue the distillation till only one-twentieth of the oil 

 remains in the retort, we obtain a mixture of odorin and animin. 

 The last 20th is a mixture of animin and olanin. 



Odorin* is a colourless oil, which refracts light very power- 

 fully. It has a peculiar and disagreeable odour, differing from 

 that of Dippel's oil. Its taste is acrid and peculiar. It restores 

 the blue colour of litmus-paper reddened by an acid. It boils 

 at about 212, and does not become solid though cooled down 

 to 13. 



It is very soluble in water, alcohol, ether, and the volatile 

 oils. It combines with the acids and forms salts. It dissolves 

 the resins, and the compounds formed with them are decomposed 

 when the solution is distilled with water. It combines also with 

 various extractive matters so intimately that it cannot be sepa- 

 rated from them by distillation. But these compounds are de- 

 composed by the more powerful salifiable bases. 



All the salts of odorin have the form of oils ; and they have 

 little stability. A portion of the odorin makes its escape, and a 

 subsalt remains, or even the acid alone, if it is feeble and fixed. 

 The nitrate, muriate, and acetate of odorin may be distilled over 

 along with water. Odorin is separated from its combination 

 with acids by almost all the other bases. The few observations 

 made upon the salts of odorin by Unverdorben, the only person 

 who hitherto has examined them, are the following : 



1. Sulphate of odorin. When we mix concentrated sulphu- 

 ric acid with more odorin than it can saturate, the mixture be- 

 comes boiling hot. The sulphate precipitates under the form of 

 a heavier oil, through the excess of odorin, which does not dis- 

 solve it. This sulphate is very soluble in water. When we dis- 

 til or evaporate it a portion of the odorin escapes, and a super- 

 sulphate of odorin remains. 



2, Sulphite of odorin is formed when odorin is made to ab- 

 sorb sulphurous acid gas. Heat is evolved, and an oily salt 



* Unverdorben, Poggendorf's Annalen, xi. 61. 



