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THE CHEMISTRY OF SOME COMMON PLANTS. 



p. Q. KEEGAN, LL.D.. 

 Patterdaie, IVestmorland. 



Club Moss. Lycopodium seJago. This is a plant of the 

 hills never seen till you ascend some i,ooo feet or so. There 

 scattered on the parched surface, or hangfing festoon-like from 

 the clefts of the wild weather-worn rocks which jut sharply 

 from or crown the hig-hest ridg-e of mountain ground, you 

 observe its clustered tufts of bristly rods. Its habitat is 

 eminently non-moist and gritty and nearly barren, although it 

 manages to carry about an equal weight of water. About the 

 beginning of July the plant is in a pretty fresh condition, and its 

 chemistry is then, so to speak, in an embryonic condition or 

 stage. The products of assimilation predominate. Nevertheless, 

 there is about 3 per cent, in dry of wax with some cholesterin, 

 and a considerable admixture of carotin, but no resin or gly- 

 ceride. The alcoholic extract (after benzene) consists of a pasty 

 mass which encloses no tannin or phloroglucin, etc., and mere 

 traces of rutin, but yields distinctive reactions of a glucosidal 

 bitter principle of no very decisive or well-defined character. 

 The aqueous extracts of the plant are specially rich in al.bu- 

 menoids, mucilage, sugars, pentosans, and a curious admixture of 

 starch and amylo-dextrin. The ash amounts to about i "6 per 

 cent, in fresh, and contains 62*4 per cent, soluble salts, 10*9 

 sand and silica, 1*5 lime, 5 oxides of iron and alumina, 2*6 

 phosphorus, and 2*7 sulphur. The well-known spores contain 

 47 per cent, fat-oil (composed of glycerides, free fat acids, and 

 phytosterin), also wax, 3 sugar, 1*5 mucilage, and a peculiar 

 nitrogenous principle called poUenine, and their familiar com- 

 bustibility (theatrical lightning) seems to depend on the peculiar 

 configuration as well as upon the highly oxidisable character of 

 the constituents. 



Wild Hyacinth. Scilla festalis. This very beautiful and 

 elegant plant hangs its silken bells in darksome avenues of the 

 woods when the soft caress of the fresh sylvan air heralds the 

 advent of spring. It occurs mostly on siliceous soils, and shuns 

 lime. The bulbs enclose inulin and starch as reserve materials ; 

 on 2nd July they have no starch or tannin, but a great quantity 

 of a gelatinous substance which yields levulose and glucose by 

 the action of dilute acids. The fresh leaves contain over 90 per 

 cent, of water and are excessively mucilaginous ; much carotin 



1903 July I. 



