xii, a, i Brill: Pangium edule and Hydnocarpits alcaUe 39 



Where immature nuts were being handled, the most successful 

 method for their treatment was the following : The ground nuts 

 were triturated with hot water, allowed to stand for some time, 

 expressed, and the process repeated. The water was removed 

 by distillation in a partial vacuum, the black gummy mass was 

 triturated repeatedly with hot 90 per cent alcohol, and the alcohol 

 was removed by distillation in a partial vacuum or more slowly 

 at not too high a temperature at atmospheric pressure. The 

 residue was repeatedly extracted, this time with hot absolute 

 alcohol, and ether was added to the extract until a precipitate 

 no longer formed. The extract was evaporated to dryness, and 

 the residue was washed a number of times with acetone in the 

 cold. In some instances this treatment left a semiviscous mass 

 that could be crystallized from water. In a few instances the 

 residue was dissolved in hot acetone and the acetone evaporated. 

 However, gynocardin is not readily soluble in acetone, and as a 

 small amount of fat persistently adheres to the glucoside and this 

 is dissolved by the acetone along with the glucoside, dissolving in 

 water preceded by washing with cold acetone was found to be 

 more successful in obtaining a pure crystalline compound. Crys- 

 tallization will not take place in the presence of a small amount 

 of the oil; consequently its removal was necessary. The com- 

 pound was obtained in the form of hairlike, golden yellow 

 crystals, with a melting point of 160° C. The yield of the pure 

 substance was between 0.2 and 0.3 per cent based on the weight 

 of the dry kernels of the immature nuts. In another sample of 

 immature seeds a quantitative estimation of the hydrocyanic 

 acid was made by suspending 4 grams of the ground seeds in 

 water and hydrolyzing them at a temperature of 39° C. with 

 emulsin. At the end of forty-eight hours the hydrocyanic acid 

 was distilled into sodium hydroxide containing a trace of potas- 

 sium iodide and the latter was titrated to opalescence with 0.01 N 

 solution of silver nitrate. This procedure indicated a content 

 of 0.0126 per cent of hydrocyanic acid corresponding to 0.156 

 per cent of gynocardin. 



PROPERTIES OF GYNOCARDIN 



The best known hydrocyanic glucoside is amygdalin. 8 Within 

 recent years many new ones have been discovered, and their 

 properties have been studied. The chemical properties of the 

 cyanogenetic glucoside, gynocardin, have been noted by De Jong 



" Abderhalden, Emil, Biochemisches Handlexikon. Julius Springer, Ber- 

 lin (1911), 2, 707. 



