— io6 — 
application, and the effect observed in some cases, the method should 
be tested further, as it is here a question of combating an infection- 
disease against which one had up to now often been powerless. 
The view recently discussed in a treatise by E. Fro mm and 
P. Clemens^) that sabinol, during its passage through the animal 
organism, attaches itself to a reducing substance which differs from 
ordinary glycuronic acid, possibly a penturonic acid, has after all been 
found to be erroneous. For it was subsequently 2) found, that the 
acid isolated from the urine of animals poisoned with sabinol, is identic 
with the ordinary glycuronic acid which was at first expected. For 
further information we must refer to the original treatises. 
Phyto-physiological Notes. 
It is well known that essential oils are a product of vegetal metabolism. 
For this reason it is interesting to learn that when the oils act externally 
on the plants, they have been found to be powerful poisons towards 
the latter. This, namely, is the result arrived at by A. Heller^) in 
his thesis "On the action of essential oils and some allied bodies on 
the plant". The experiments were made by submitting germ-plants and 
parts of plants under bell-shaped glass shades, with certain precautions, 
to the action of the bodies to be examined. As such were used 
essential oils and hydrocarbons in the form of vapour, liquid pa- 
raffin, and resins dissolved in turpentine oil, olive oil, or paraffin. 
The former were vaporised on paper folded in the shape of a fan, 
the latter introduced by means of a strip of paper into an incision 
made in the stem. The result of the experiment is essentially as 
follows: the toxic effect of the essential oils is very powerful. In the 
liquid state, or when dissolved in water, they act less powerfully. Oil- 
producing plants have a higher resistance to their own oil than strange 
plants. The oil vapour enters the plant by the gas channels, dissolves 
in the imbibition-water of the membrane, and in this manner reaches 
the interior of the cell. The cuticula renders the action slower, but 
does not arrest it. A dry membrane offers less protection than an 
imbibed one. Volatile hydrocarbons show the same action as essential 
oils. The absorption of dissolved resins in the living cell does not 
appear to be possible with artificial supply. Paraffin is not absorbed 
in the living cell by mosses and fungi. 
The information on the presence of essential oils in hepatica, which 
up to the present was very scarce, has been enriched somewhat by a 
^) Zeitschrift fiir physiologische Chemie 40 (1903), 251. 
^) Zeitschrift fiir physiologische Chemie 41 (1904), 243. 
3) Thesis, Leipzig, 1903. 
