NATURAL DEPOSIT OF ALUMINIUM SUCCINATE IN TIMBER, 333 
aluminium makes it doubly interesting, because of the rare occur- 
rence in plants of this element. 
The following extract is from a recent work.! “In spite of the 
wide distribution of clay in soil and in rocks, its chief constituent, 
aluminium, is confined in its occurrence to very few plants (lichens 
and club-mosses).” Another statement of the same kind is made 
by G. Bunge,? as follows, “ Aluminium is one of the elements 
most frequently met with. . . . It is therefore remarkable 
that alumina has scarcely anything to do with the nutrition of 
living beings. It has been shown positively to exist in any notice- 
able quantity only in a few plants, especially in a few kinds of 
Lycopodium.” 
We have also failed to obtain any evidence from other sources, 
of the presence of aluminium having been detected in material 
similar to which we now bring under your notice. That a salt of 
aluminium has been circulating through the vessels of this tree, 
Grevillea robusta, appears evident, but in what form it was origin- 
ally deposited in the cavity of the wood it is now impossible to 
decide. The probability that it was as a malate, is indicated by 
the perfect solubility of aluminium malate in water, and the total 
insolubility of aluminium succinate in that liquid. We may also 
here point out that no inorganic acid could be detected in the 
portion taken for investigation. 
In reference to the formation of artificial salts of aluminium 
succinate little information can be gathered. “According to Gehlin 
and Bucholz,t succinate of soda precipitates hydrochlorate of 
alumina (not however according to Bansdorff from very dilute 
Solutions), Wenzel obtained by direct combinations an insoluble 
“alt which crystallized in prisms.” Chemical text books as a rule 
are silent as to the existence of any aluminium salt of euccinic acid, 
ae 
__ Treatise on the Physiology of Plants—Dr. Paul Sorauer. (Weiss’ transla- 
tion 1895) page 36, 
2 . , 
; Physiological and Pathological Chemistry, p. 27, 1890 (Kegan Paul). 
See also Text Book of Botany by Julius Sachs, 2nd Edition, p. 695. 
* Gmelin, x., 108, 
