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THE CHEMISTRY OF SOME COMMON PLANTS. 
P.O. KEE CAN: el ie 
Patterdale, Westmorland. 
DAFFODIL (Narcissus pseudo-narcissus)—The host of golden 
daffodils that people the underwoods, and stretch in lines along 
the margin of a bay in the early springtime, serves to awaken 
a love of nature following upon the dead waste of winter. 
The plants are hardy, not particular as to soil, and will thrive 
im damp places partially shaded by trees. The bulbs have 
well developed mycorhiza, even when grown in garden soil. 
It is a slow growing plant with relatively small assimilatory 
powers, starch being absent from the leaves, save occasionally 
only around the vascular bundles of their lower parts. The 
benzene extract of the dried overground parts amounted to 
3°1 per cent., and contained a moderate quantity of carotin 
and fat-oil with wax and cholesterin. The alcoholic extract 
contained a distinctive tannoid yielding vivid yellows with 
alkalies, chloride of tin, and aceto-Hcl ; also some cane sugar, and 
resin, but no phloroglucin or scillain. There was much pectosic 
mucilage, very little reserve starch, and a good deal of oxalate 
of calcium. The ash of the leaves contained 61-4 per cent. 
soluble salts, 10-1 lime, 3.6 magnesia, 5P?O°, 450%, and 9:8 
chlorine, with considerable manganese, and much _ soluble 
carbonate. The flowers are tinctured by carotin in homo- 
geneous plastids, and also by a dissolved pigment which is the 
tannoid afore-mentioned. The bulb and fruits contain scillain, 
and also an alkaloid. The flowering bulb contains a good deal 
of starch, and substances, giving the usual alkaloid re- 
actions. It may be gleaned from the above analysis that 
the daffodil resembles the non-siliceous grasses in many res- 
pects. There is the same sort of fatty matter, resin and tannoid, ' 
but there is much less starch, a more watery constitution, and 
a vigorous deassimilation of the albumenoids as evinced by 
the abundance of carbonates in the ash. But whereas in 
some of the grass tribe this process evolves a red pigment in 
the floral parts, in the daffodil it halts therein at the tannoid, 
1.e., the yellow-imparting stage. ° 
GOOSEFOOT (Chenopodium Bonus-Henricus)—It is difficult 
not to sympathise with the distribution of this remarkable 
species. It cannot keep away apparently from humanity. 
Near hamlets and villages, by old churches and monasteries, 
on roadsides and waste places, and near dwellings it flourishes, 
and even some remote sheepfolds are occasionally favoured 
with its presence. It belongs to a salt and drought-loving 
order. The root stock is thick, fleshy, and many-headed, 
with an anomalous structure ; it contains starch and nitrates, 
but no tannin. The leaves are of a ‘hard’ green colour, 
Naturalist, 
