388 



■ebullition, and it is precipitated by cooling ; it is saponifiabk' 

 by caustic potash ; and, when put into ebullition with an> 

 moniac, forms a soapy emulsion. It is dissolved by hot 

 nitric acid, with a disengagement of nitrous gas, and forms 

 oxalic acid. This matter appears to us to resemble hot 

 bees-wax, and it may serve for the same use, for we made 

 it into wax eandles. 



ff We obtained the fibrous matter by evaporating the milk, 

 pouring off the melted wax, washing the residue with an es^ 

 sential oil to carry off the last portions of wax, pressing the 

 residue, and making it boil for a long time with water in 

 order to volatize the essential oil. Notwithstanding this 

 operation, the smell of the essential oil cannot be altogether 

 taken away. The fibrous matter thus obtained is brown, 

 because it is no doubt somewhat altered by the high tempe- 

 rature of the melted wax ; it has no taste, and put on a hot 

 iron, turns, swells up, melts, and is carbonized, spreading a 

 smell of broiled meat. If treated with a diluted nitric 

 acid, a gas is disengaged from it which is not nitrous gasj 

 the fibrous matter is transformed into a fat yellow mass in 

 the same manner as muscular flesh, when azote gas is pre- 

 pared by the process of M. Bertholet. The alcohol does not 

 dissolve the fibrous matter, and we have employed that liquid 

 to obtain it without alteration. In treating the extract of 

 vegetable milk by the reiterated action of spirits of wine, 

 and pouring off the hot liquor, the matter is at length obtain- 

 ed in white and flexible fibres ; in that state it dissolves easily 

 in diluted hydrochloric acid. This substance has the same 

 characters as the animal fibrine. The presence in vegetable 

 milk of a product which is only found ordinarily in the secre- 

 tions of animals, is a very surprising fact, which we should 

 announce with great circumspection, if one of our most cele- 

 brated chemists, Mr. Vauquelin, had not already found the 

 animal fibrine in the milky juice of the Carica Papaya. It re- 

 mains to examine the liquid which, in the milk of the Palo cfe 



