iS13.] Imperial Institute of France, 395 



M. Vauquelin, continuing his researches on vegetable prin- 

 ciples, has subjected the daphne alpina to numerous experiments. 

 This shrub is known by the excessive acridity of its bark, which 

 is employed in medicine as a rubefacient, and the extract of 

 which mixed with fatty matter forms a pomatum, which in 

 many cases is substituted for that of, cantharides. By digesting 

 this bark in alcohol and water he discovered in it two new prin- 

 ciples of a very remarkable nature. 



The first, which Vauquelin calls the acrid principle^ is of an 

 oily and resinous nature. Not becoming volatile but at a heat 

 superior to that of boiling alcohol, it does not rise with that 

 liquid, but may be distilled over with water. 



The second principle, named hitter principle, is soluble in 

 boiling water; and on cooling, shoots into white crystals having 

 the form of needles. 



The bark of the daphne yielded besides, like that of many 

 other plants, a green resin, a yellow colouring matter, a brown 

 substance containing azote since it yielded ammonia, and salts 

 with a base of potash, of iron, and of lime. 



M. Vauquelin terminates his memoir with this important 

 observation, that the acrid and caustic vegetable substances are 

 oily or resinous, and contain no acid, in which respect they agree 

 with poisonous plants. Hence he concludes that we ought to 

 suspect those plants as not fit for eating which contain no acid. 



Reaumur had announced more than a century ago that 

 certain fossile teeth acquired a bluish colour, similar to that of 

 the turquoise, when they are cautiously exposed to a graduated 

 heat. M. Sage having observed that prussic acid is obtained by 

 heating a mixture of potash and of the gelatinous substance of 

 the teeth, and that the magnet attracts iron from the powder of 

 calcined teeth, thinks that the blue colour of the western tur- 

 quoise is due to a real Prussian blue. 



MINERALOGY AND GEOLOGY. 



The fossil spoils of organised bodies still continue to occupy 

 naturalists. 



M. Traulle d'i\bbeville has presented to the Class the petrified 

 head of a small cetaceous animal^ which appears to have belonged 

 to the whale genus, and which was dug out of the harbour at 

 Antwerp. M. le Comte Dejean, Senator, sent a similar head 

 from the same place to the administration of the Museum of 

 Natural History. Many vertebras of animals of the same class, 

 and numerous shells, have been found in the same place. 



M. Traulie likewise presented a portion of the jaw-bone of a 

 rhinoceros, found on the sand-hills of the valley of the Somme, 

 in the neighbourhood of Abbeville. 



M. Daudebart de Fenissac^ a young soldier, transported sue- 



