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Spearmint Oil. It is still difficult to obtain sufficient quantities 
of the pure American distillate, and it is only possible to buy small 
parcels here and there. This state of affairs will no doubt continue 
until the autumn. 
St. Joseph County, in the State Michigan, supplied in 1902 341 lbs. 
spearmint oil^) which had been produced by four farmers. The area 
cultivated with the plant amounted to 1 7 acres. Accordingly, the yield 
from I acre was 20 lbs. oil 
Spike Oil. Fine qualities of guaranteed purity are already be- 
coming very scarce, a fact which points to a dearth of this oil before 
the new harvest. For current contracts we are holding back pro- 
portionate quantities. 
Parry and Bennett 2) report on an adulterated oil of spike which 
during the last few months has been placed on the English market. 
Although the oil answered the usual requirements with regard to specific 
gravity, rotatory power, and solubility, a closer examination revealed an 
admixture of one or more foreign bodies, such as oils of turpentine 
and rosemary, and safrol. The autors have found that pure spike oil 
can be mixed with 2 5 ^/^ of certain cheap adulterants, without causing 
a striking alteration in the specific gravity, the angle of rotation, and 
the usually accepted solubility. Parry and Bennett give the ordinary 
upper limit of the angle of rotation as -\- 4° and designate oils with 
a rotatory power above -j" 5° ^^^Y suspicious. The same authors 
recommend the use of 65^/0 alcohol for the determination of solubility, 
instead of JO^/q. Pure spike oils dissolve at 15° C in 6 volumes 
65^/0 alcohol, whilst admixtures of 5 to io^/q of most adulterants 
prevent this solubility. In. order to guard against adulterated oils which 
might pass this test, fractional distillation is absolutely necessary. 
Spoonwort Oil. In the further course of their studies on dextro- 
rotatory sec. butylamine and on alkylised d-butyl-ureas and thio-ureas, 
Gadamer^) and his pupil Urban^) have arrived at the result that, 
as a matter of fact, as Gadamer had already suspected, a rather 
far-reaching racemisation occurs when sec. butyl mustard oil is heated 
with hydrochloric acid. According to Gadamer, the previously ob- 
served differences in the melting points of the gold salts of butyl- 
amine produced by different methods, are due to the ability of butyl- 
amine of forming abnormally composed gold salts. The splitting up of 
^) Twentieth Annual Report of the Bureau of Labor of the State of Michigan 
p. 447. 
^) Chemist and Druggist 63 (1903), loii. 
3) Archiv der Pharm. 242 (1904), 48. 
^) Archiv der Pharm. 242 (1904), 51. 
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