Keegan : The Chemistry of some Common Plants. 433 



with the starchy reserve materials then stored up ; in the 

 following year vegetation is resumed very early, and the stem 

 now grows very rapidly, the flowers appear soon, and the root 

 reserves are consumed. The whole plant when bruised emits 

 a strong smell of garlic, due to the action of the ferment my- 

 rosin on a glucoside yielding sulphide and sulphocyanide of 

 allyl. On 24th May, the whole dried leaves yielded 2.7 per 

 cent, of wax and carotin with a little fat-oil, but no resin ; 

 the alcoholic extract contained a red-brown substance, whose 

 solution with iron salts gave a nearly black colour, with chloride 

 of tin a bright yellow colour, and with iodine a deep violet 

 flocculent precipitate which seems to indicate a derivative of 

 pyrogallol, perhaps sinapin or sinapic acid ; there was only a 

 little mucilage and no sugar of any kind, and very little extract- 

 able starch. The ash of the overground parts yielded 56.4 per 

 cent soluble salts, 3.1 silica, 14.8 lime, 3.5 magnesia, 9.5 

 P^O^, 1 2. 1 SO^, and 6.3 chlorine ; there w^as only a little iron, 

 manganese, or carbonates. The analysis indicates a strange 

 fixity of the albumenoids and the carbohydrates ; and this 

 fact seems to account largely for the invariability of the plant 

 under the influence of culture, and its incapability of forming 

 hybrids with nearly allied species. 



Lesser Celandine (Ranunculus ficaria) — This is Words- 

 worth's favourite flower, and therefore worthy of special 

 reverence by all scientists who revere the poet who shunned 

 the town and clung to the country. The subterranean organs 

 (tubers) are morphologically comparable to those of certain 

 Orchids, and likewise have endophytic mycorhiza ; they con- 

 tain an irritant camphoraceous substance (anemonal), also 

 starch, cane-sugar in August, glucose and other sugars in Feb- 

 ruary. On i6th May, the dried leaves and petioles contained 

 1 .2 per cent, of wax, with a good deal of carotin and traces of 

 fat-oil ; also a tannoid yielding the reactions of luteolin, some 

 glucose and cane-sugar, a little resin, but no saponin or free 

 phloroglucin ; also much pectosic mucilage and starch, with a 

 little oxalate of calcium and proteid ; the ash amounted to 

 13.7 per cent, in dry, and contained 61.2 soluble salts, 6.8 

 silica, 9,2 lime, 2.2 magnesia, with a little manganese, 3.5 

 P^O^, 4.4 SO^, and 12.8 chlorine; there was very much 

 soluble carbonate. The carotin which tinges the corolla does not 

 occur in a granular form ; the epidermal cells contain a highly 

 refractive yellow oil, and the subepidermal layer is densely 



1909 Dec. I. 



E 2 



