Miscellanies. 403 



Dumas, in his lecture on " the chemical statics of organized beings," 

 remarks on azote : — " This azote, fixed by plants, seems therefore to 

 produce a concrete fibrinous substance, which constitutes the rudiment 

 of all the organs of the vegetable. It also serves to produce the liquid 

 albumen which the coagulable juices of all plants contain, and the 

 caseine so often confounded with albumen, but so easy to recognize in 

 many plants. Fibrine, albumen, and caseine, exist then in plants. 

 These three products, identical in their composition, as M, Vogel has 

 long since proved, offer a singular analogy with the ligneous matter, the 

 amidon and the dextrine. 



" Indeed, fibrine is like ligneous matter, insoluble — albumen, like 

 starch, coagulates by heat — caseine, like dextrine, is soluble. These 

 azotized matters moreover are neutral, as well as the three parallel 

 non-azotized matters ; and we shall see that by their abundance in the 

 animal kingdom, they act the same part that these latter exhibited to us 

 in the vegetable kingdom. Besides, in like manner, as it suffices for the 

 formation of non-azotized neutral matters, to unite carbon with water 

 or with its elements, so also for the formation of these azotized neutral 

 matters, it suffices to unite carbon and ammonium with the elements of 

 water — 48 molecules of carbon, 6 of ammonium, and 17 of water, 

 constitute or may constitute, fibrine, albumen, and caseine. 



" Thus in both cases, reduced bodies, carbon or ammonium and wa- 

 ter, suffice for the formation of the matters which we are considering, and 

 their production enters quite naturally into the circle of reactions, which 

 vegetable nature seems especially adapted to produce. The function 

 of azote in plants is therefore worthy of the most serious attention, 

 since it is this which serves to form the fibrine, which is found as the 

 rudiment in all the organs — since it is this which serves for the produc- 

 tion of the albumen and caseine, so largely diffused in so many plants, 

 and which animals assimilate or modify according to the exigencies of 

 their own nature. 



" It is in plants then that the true laboratory of organic chemistry re- 

 sides ; thus carbon, hydrogen, ammonium and water are the principles 

 which plants elaborate : ligneous matter, starch, gums, and sugar, on 

 the one part — fibrine, albumen, caseine, and gluten, on the other, are 

 then the fundamental products of the two kingdoms ; products formed 

 in plants, and in plants alone, and transferred by digestion into animals." 

 — Lond. Edin. and Buh. Jour. No. 126, Dec. 1841. 



11. Oil of Indian corn.* — This oil is obtained in the course of the 

 process of making whiskey. It rises in the mash-tubs and is found in 



* We are indebted to our friend Chas. Tracy, Esq.,of Utica, for the communica- 

 tion of this notice. — Eds. 



