— 132 — 
with the oxydases of gum arabic, Lerat also obtained dehydrodi- 
vanillin. The oxidation effect is therefore with vanillin the same as 
Bougault had established for morphine, which under the same 
conditions yielded dehydrodimorphine. 
In his work on spices and their adulteration, Riihle^) gives a 
short review of the commercial qualities and substitutes of genuine 
vanilla. The best kind of genuine vanilla, the fruit of Vanilla plani- 
folia gathered before it has become quite ripe, is the long Mexican 
(up to 25 cm. long, 6 to 8 mm. wide, 3 to 4 mm. thick), but this is 
of scarcely any consequence for the European trade; the shorter 
Mexican Ciinarrona or wild vanilla falls a long way behind it in quality. 
For the European trade, the Bourbon Vanilla and that from German 
East Africa, whose cultivation is on the increase, come chiefly under 
consideration. Of less value is the vanilla from Mauritius, Java, the 
Fiji Islands, and the Seychelles. As substitutes of genuine vanilla, 
the fruit of Vanilla aromatica which has no aroma, and of a few 
other species of vanilla are employed, which partly contain, besides 
vanillin, also piperonal, and which are placed on the market as vanillons. 
To these belong the broad vanilla, and also the La Guyara, Guayana, 
and Brazilian vanillas, of which the former contains 0,4 to 0,7 
vanillin, whilst genuine vanilla contains i to 2,75 ^/q vanillin, which, 
however, by itself is no factor for judging the quality of vanilla. As 
adulterants, extracted or bad vanilla are used, to which a vanilla-like 
odour and a better appearance are given by rubbing on balsam of 
Peru or benzoic acid solution. 
Two years ago the Soekaboem Agricultural Society in West Java 
had offered a prize for the best Java vanilla. Greshoff^) publishes 
in a long work the result of the competition in which 15 contributors 
took part. The samples of vanilla sent in, 50 pods of each, were 
submitted by the Director of the Colonial Museum at Haarlem to 
the judgment of several experts; as such acted a wholesale dealer 
in vanilla, an apothecary, a druggist, a chemist and a chocolate manu- 
facturer. As tests for the quality of the vanilla w^hich was judged 
chiefly from the point of view of saleability and commercial value, 
the following properties were principally considered: appearance, colour, 
length of the individual pods, efflorescence of crystals, aroma, fulness, 
moisture, etc. The result of the very detailed comparison, in which 
the 15 samples obtained between 55 (best) and 9 (worst) "marks", 
should be read in the original work; on the whole the opinions of 
^) Chem. Zeitschrift 3 (1903), 177. 
2) Pharm. Weekblad 40 (1903), 981. 
