CHEMICAL PREPARATIONS AND DRUGS. | 6 
The Mannheim laboratory determined the melting point in an apparatus, prescribed 
for testing fats by the German Excise Authorities and a picture and description of 
which are given in the article. Lehmann ascertains the melting point by melting 10 g. 
of vanillin in a test tube, placed into a water-bath of 90°, allows the melted substance 
to cool to 76° in another water-bath which has been heated to 75° only, and then 
adds some crystals. The thermometer rises quickly to the highest temperature, which 
is considered as the solidification point. 
As said before, the investigation at the Mannheim laboratory proved that the 
melting and solidification points of good clove-oil-vanillin and good guayacol-vanillin 
are completely identical and that therefore vanillin can be obtained from guayacol 
just as pure as from eugeénol. As regards the preparations tested, Fritzsche’s eugenol- 
vanillin was even inferior to Boehringer’s guayacol-vanillin, as far as the look and the 
-sulphuric acid test are concerned, but the manufacture as such of vanillin from clove 
oil cannot, of course, be held responsible for this. Boehringer & Soehne finally urge 
how important it is just at present that this much-used aromatic can be manufactured 
in perfect condition from a coal-tar distillation product, for the German industry, in 
consequence, becomes independent of foreign countries at a time when the imports 
of transmarine cloves fail to reach us. 
The observation that vanillin is frequently found in soils’) and unfavourably 
influences’) the growth of plants induced M. H. Sullivan?) to examine wheat germs for 
their contents of vanillin. He succeeded indeed in finding in the young wheat plants 
a substance which reacted upon sodium bisulphite and gave the colour reactions, 
characteristic for vanillin, with ferric chloride (blue), ferrous sulphate and bromine 
water (green), and with a mixture of hydrochloric acid, sulphuric acid and acetone 
(violet). Sullivan further determined vanillin by the colorimetric method according to 
Folin and Denis*), thus finding in wheat grains 1 to 6, in wheat digested with 5 p.c. 
Sulphuric acid 5 to 14, in wheat bran 3 and in the various parts of the germs 6 to 
18 parts per million of vanillin. 
As it is known that more vanillin can be extracted from soils previously treated 
‘with sulphuric acid, Sullivan supposes that plants often contain substances, which, 
on hydrolysis or during the growth of the plants, yield vanillin, and that these bodies 
are likewise present in the soil as plant secretions. 
The author further found vanillin in rotting oakwood, in the pulp and skin of 
pine-apples and in extracts obtained with hot water from turf grass. 
One looks in vain for an exact chemical proof in Sullivan’s treatise that he really 
had to deal with vanillin. To prove the presence of a body in such infinitesimal 
traces merely by colour reactions, and that not only qualitatively, but also quantitatively, 
is a rather daring undertaking, the value of which may be disputed. 
E. P. Haussler®) reports on numerous colour reactions of vanillin. With the aid of 
phloroglicinol, even 0,000005 g. of vanillin give a distinct, pink colour, and with 
p-phenylenediamine hydrochloride even 0,0000008 to 0,0000005 g. of vanillin may still 
_ be detected by a feeble, yellow coloration during evaporation. Altogether, Haussler 
describes 27 different colour reactions of vanillin. Teresantalic acid may likewise be 
1) E. C. Shorey, J. Agr. Res. 1 (1914), 357. — %) Schreiner and Reed, Bull. 47, Bur. of Soils, U. S. Dept. 
_ Agric. (1907); Schreiner and Skinner, Bull. 77, Bur. of Soils, U. S. Dept. Agric. (1911). — %) Journ. Ind. Eng. 
Chemistry 6 (1914), 919. — *) Journ. Biol. Chemistry 12 (1912), 238. —. 5) Zeitschr. f. anal. Chem. 58 (1914), 
363, 691; Chem. Zentralbl. 1914, Il. 86; 1915, I. 221. 
