— 97 — 



We have also to mention two of our own distillates, made from 

 plants cultivated by ourselves. Unfortunately the quantity of oil obtained 

 in each case was so small, that we were compelled to restrict our- 

 selves to a determination of the properties mentioned below. 



Oil of Tanacetum boreale Fisch. The half-dried herb 

 yielded o,i2°/ oil having a yellowish colour and a powerful thujone 

 odour. d 15 o 0,9218; « D -(-48° 2 5'; forming a cloudy solution with 

 about 8 vol. 70 per cent, alcohol, with abundant separation of paraffin. 

 The foregoing shows that the oil from this plant which is indigenous 

 to Siberia, fairly closely resembles common oil of tansy in its properties. 



Oil from Monarda didyma L. The oil, obtained in a yield 

 of 0,04 °/ from the half-dried herb, had a golden-yellow colour and 

 possessed a pleasant aromatic odour somewhat like ambergris. It had 

 the following constants: d 15 o 0,8786; «d — 2 4°36 / ; soluble in 1,5 to 

 2 volumes 70 per cent, alcohol; when further diluted it rapidly became 

 strongly turbid on account of separation of paraffin. 



These properties differ slightly from a distillate of Monarda didyma 

 which was described about a year ago by Brandel 1 ), but this may 

 possibly be due less to climatic conditions, than to a difference in 

 the method of distillation. 



Notes on recent scientific work concerning terpenes and 

 terpene derivatives. 



The attempts made by scientists to discover by means of syn- 

 thesis the constitution of compounds having a complicated structure, 

 has recently led to the confirmation of Bredt's camphor formula, 

 and thereby to the solution of a long-pending question 2 ). W. H.Per- 

 kin jun. 3 ) now has followed in the same steps, by producing syn- 

 thetically the two terpineols of the melting points 35 and 32 . In 

 both cases he started from the (5-ketohexahydrobenzoic acid ester 

 which he had previously obtained by a series of reactions from 

 /?-iodopropionic acid ester and sodium cyanacetic ester, that is to say, 

 two bodies produced by synthesis. The above-mentioned ester, when 

 treated with magnesium and methyl iodide according to Grignard, 

 was converted into p-oxyhexahydro-p-toluylic acid ester, whose hydroxvl- 

 group was substituted by halogen. On boiling this halogenised ester 

 with pyridine or weak alkalis, there resulted an unsaturated ester, 



*) Comp. Report October 1903, 48. 



2 ) Berl. Berichte 36 (1903), 4332. — Report April 1904, 98. 



3 ) Journ. Chem. Soc. 85 (1904), 654. 



