— 102 — 1 



sassafras oil has always been subject to adulteration with certain fractions 

 of camphor oil, safrol, 8jc. which it is very difficult to detect. 



Savin Oil. ). W. Agnew and R. Croad 1 ) in a paper read before the 

 Society of Public Analysts and other Analytical Chemists, report that in 

 the fractions of a saponified savin oil passing over at up to 160° they 

 have detected the presence of «-pinene. They identified the body by 

 oxidising with mercuric acetate into sobrerol (m. p. 131°) and 8-hydroxy- 

 carvotanacetone (m. p. of the semicarbazone 175°). From the sobrerol 

 they obtained the dibromide (m. p. 131 to 132°) and the pinol-dibromide 

 (m. p. 94 °) 2 ). The pinene fraction amounted to 1,7 p. c. of the original oil. 

 We ourselves had been unable to identify pinene in savin oil 3 ), although 

 we have found the oil to contain a small fraction with the b. p. of pinene. 

 It would therefore appear as if the method employed by Agnew and Croad 

 is better adapted for the detection of small quantities of pinene than is 

 the preparation of the nitrosochloride which we had attempted at the 

 time. The other constituents were: about 16 p. c. Z-sabinene, 5,3 p. c. 

 terpinene (m. p. of the nitrosite 155 to 157°) 4 ) and 17 p. c. sabinol (b. p. 

 208 to 209°; d 15 o 0,9391; [«] D15 o + 17,04°). The constants of the sabirtene 

 were as follow: b. p. 162 to 166°, d 20 o 0,8468, [«] D15G — 42,5°. When the 

 sabinene fraction was treated with mercuric acetate oxidation immediately 

 ensued, and after 15 minutes a large quantity of mercurous acetate had 

 been formed. With pinene, on the other hand, oxidation only sets in 

 after the lapse of one hour. 



The saponification-liquor of savin oil contained, in addition to formic 

 and acetic acid, a saturated acid, m. p. 85°. 



It is remarkable that the oil, which is said to have been supplied by 

 us, should have been lsevorotatory, whereas all savin oil which we have 

 observed up to the present has been dextrorotatory. H. E. Burgess also 

 (as he stated in the discussion on Agnew and Croad's paper), has 

 hitherto only observed dextrorotatory savin oils. 



Among the numerous savin oils investigated by the authors, only the 

 lsevorotatory product contained the normal quantity of sabinene, whereas 

 all the other samples only contained small proportions of this hydrocarbon, 

 but considerable proportions of pinene. From this fact Agnew and Croad 

 draw the conclusion that the last-named oils had been sophisticated with 

 turpentine oil. In our opinion it is also possible that the raw material 

 of the samples which were rich in pinene was partly derived from Juni- 

 perus phoenicea, L, of which the oil contains a fairly large proportion of 

 pinene 5 ). 



x ) Analyst 37 (1912), 295. 



2 ) Comp. Report October 1909, 167. 



3 ) Report April 1908, 84. 

 *) Report April 1911, 106. 



5 ) Comp. Report April 1906, 61. 



