408 Scientific Intelligence. 
new alkaloid. It is soluble in boiling water, but crystallizes on cooling, 
and dissolves very readily in alcohol. These solutions have a strong 
alkaline reaction; their taste is slightly bitter, but that of the salts is pow- 
erfully so. Its combinations with acids are beautifully crystalline. 
The hydrochlorate forms fine acicular crystals resembling those of t 
corresponding morphine compound. Its formula is C,,H,.N,0,, Cl 
H+2HO. It is quite neutral in its reactions. _ With bichlorid of plati- 
num it forms a sparingly soluble double salt, which is composed of one 
equiv. of each of its constituents. Mr. Fownes has described a large 
number of other salts of this new base, which he denominates furfuro- 
line. He observes that they are precipitated neither by solutions of per- 
oxyd of iron, oxyds of copper or silver, lime or baryta. 
This substance is very remarkable in several particulars ; the man- 
ner in which it is derived from an amide, is peculiar and interesting. 
Caustic alkalies generally decompose this class of compounds, evolving 
ammonia, but we see in this instance only a re-arrangement of its 
elements, producing a new and peculiar compound, Ponies has also 
shown that hydrobenzamide, a product of the action of ammonia on oil 
of bitter almonds, is slowly changed by the same. process, into a new 
alkaloid which he has named benzoline. . In this case the atomic weight 
remains unaltered. The statement relative to the behavior of the salts 
of furfuroline with those of other bases, is worthy of especial notice. 
That a hydrochlorate or sulphate, should not precipitate salts of silver 
or baryta, is an anomaly in the history of the alkaloids; and finds an 
analogy, only in the peculiar nature of the salts of ethyle and methyle, 
and the no less curious reactions of the analogous compounds of 
of chromium. The nature of the affinities which unite the elements 
in such cpempowldhs presents a highly iit subject for —_ 
and speculation 
The sbifvtials Sasttasitiein of ve sosipoteiie must be regarded as one 
of the greatest achievements of organic chemistry. ' The result of such 
discoveries does not however furnish us any key to the nature of the 
vital forces, but only demonstrates more clearly the fact that these com> 
pounds, although generated in organized structures, are the results of 
chemical, and not of vital action. “All the products of organic life which 
the art of the chemist has as yet succeeded in artificially forming: * are 
but the secreted or excreted products of the organism, and ¢ 
affinities alone have produced them. These affinities are perhaps en- 
abled to act with a peculiar power in the living structure, only so far as 
the organic forces may present the plated in such conditions as are 
favorable to their 
atest the results which have rewarded: ae iaventigatioinel 
) highly i curious. “Thiis-by the oxy 
