Foreign Literature and Science. 369 



INTELLIGENCE AND MISCELLANIES. 



I. Foreign.* 



1. Oil of the seed Croton Tiglium. — The great energy 

 and efficacy of this medicine have attracted the attention 

 of the medical profession, and its effects in many cases in 

 which it has been used, have been so powerful and beneficial, 

 that it bids fair to become a prominent article of the mate- 

 ria medica. A late number of the London Journal of Sci- 

 ence and the Arts contains some observations upon this oil 

 by Mr. Frost, in which he remarks, that the best manner of 

 giving it is in the form of a pill, as by that means the un- 

 pleasant feeling about the throat, produced in taking it oth- 

 erwise, is avoided. The tiglium seed oil, which is on sale, is 

 frequently admixed with olive, castor, or rapeseed oil, which, 

 in a medical point of view, is rather an advantage than oth- 

 erwise, as it tends to moderate the violence of its action. 

 The genuine oil is so powerful as to produce death in the 

 dose of a very few drops ; but different samples vary in 

 point of strength, which of course depends on the rate of 

 active matter which they may contain. The plant is a na- 

 tive of the East Indies ; it is a shrub seldom exceeding ten 

 feet in height. It belongs to the twenty first class monoe- 

 cia, and the eighth order monadelphia of Linnaeus, and to 

 the natural order euphorbias of Jussieu. 



The expressed oil of the seed of this plant is entirely so- 

 luble in ether and the oil of turpentine, and partially so in 

 alcohol. One hundred grains of the seed consisted of 32 

 shell and 68 kernel = 100. One hundred grains of the 

 seed digested in three drachms of sulphuric ether sp. grav. 

 .71 — afforded 25 grains of fixed oil. 



2. Strength of Leaden Pipes. — Experiments on this sub- 

 ject have been made at Edinburgh, by Mr. Jardine, at the 

 Water Company's yard. The method followed was to close 

 one end of a piece of pipe, and then throw water into it by 

 a forcing pump attached to the other end, the force or pres- 



* We here insert a number of extracts and abstracts which were prepared, 

 as will appear by the dates, some time since — but the articles are still interest- 

 ing, and may not have been seen by most of our readers. 



Vol. XIV.— No. 2. 21 



