April, 1880. 
THE CHEMIST AND DRUGGIST. 
93 
After some remarks from Messrs. Macgowan, Jones, and 
Morison, Mr. Wm. Bowen moved that the report of the com- 
mittee be adopted, which was seconded by Mr. Gamble, and 
carried unanimously. 
A vote of thanks to the chairman, Mr. C. R. Blackett, 
brought the meeting to a close. 
Scientific Summary. 
From the Pharmaceutical and other journals we make the 
following excerpts : — 
The present and final number of Medicinal Plants contains 
figures and descriptions of the following plants : — Canarium 
commune , Conium macula turn, Coriandrum sativum, Curcur - 
bita Pepo , Crinum asiaticum , Strychnos Ignatii , Pinus Abies, 
Avena sativa , and Hordeum vulgare . A correct reprint of 
Pinus Picea is also added, a transposition in the text having 
occurred in that already published in part 38. A systematic 
list of the contents of the work, an alphabetical index, a list 
of errata, and the preface, complete the work. Of the 
immense amount of labour involved in a work of this kind, 
only those who have to bring a work up to date can have any 
idea. The vast amount of foreign literature scattered 
in various publications that has to be consulted, and the 
balancing or reconciling of contradictory or conflicting state- 
ments, render the production of a work like the present, one 
of considerable labour. No other publication can be said to 
give so complete and yet succinct an account of the medicinal 
plants of Great Britain, India, and the United States, and of 
their products, as this one. It includes no less than eighty-nine 
natural orders, two hundred and thirty- three genera, and three 
hundred and six species, the information concerning which is 
brought up to the present time. The plan adopted, by means 
of which the whole can be arranged in consecutive systematic 
order by simply paying attention to the number attached to 
each species, is a most excellent one, and now that the work 
can be bound, it will be found that the four handsome volumes 
which it is intended to make will have their contents arranged 
in the most convenient manner possible. No pharmaceutical 
or medical library will be complete without Bentley and 
Trimen’s Medicinal Plants. 
A note in the Chemical News , by Mr. ft. H. Ridout (13th 
February, p. 73), on the products of the slow oxidation of 
phosphorus, is not without an application to a common form 
of specialty terminology that reveals anything but the real 
nature of the preparation. Four or five years since a country 
ractitioner having in consultation with a London specialist 
een recommended to use an injection of “ozonised water,” 
unsuccessfully tried in various places to obtain a supply. Mr. 
Ridout being applied to, although aware of the general im- 
pression that ozone is insoluble in water, made an experiment 
by aspirating a current of air over moist phosphorus. An 
abundant evolution of an oxidising body was thus produced, 
which was passed through caustic soda to free it from phos- 
phorous vapour, and then through recently distilled water ; 
but after this action had been continued for six hours the 
water was found to contain not a trace of any oxidising 
agent. After this evidence of the insolubility of ozofie in 
water, an application was made to the specialists for a sample, 
which proved to be a solution of potassium permanganate. 
Dr. Vasowicz, in La Ruche Pharmaceutigue , has detailed 
some experiments made with a view to ascertain the correctness 
of the statements of Dr. Jehn that oil of peppermint is 
coloured red by hydrate of chloral. He shows that in those 
cases in which the oil was of ascertained purity no colouration 
took place ; in those in which it was not possible to ascertain 
the exact purity a yellow colouration occurred. 
Ammoniacal glycyrrhizin appears to be steadily making its 
way upon the Continent. According to the Journal de Phar- 
macie , the French Minister of War has just ordered its definite 
introduction into the military hospitals, where a preparation 
containing four decigrammes of glycyrrhizin in a litre of 
water is to take the place of the old tisane de reglisse. 
Baron Miieller and L. Rummel describe, in the Zeitschrift 
Oest. Ajp. Ver. f a new glucoside obtained from Gastrolobium 
bilobum , an Australian plant, which possesses poisonous pro- 
erties. It is called “ gastrolobin,” and is described as a 
lackish, brittle hygroscopic substance, with an odour and 
taste resembling that of sassafras, soluble in hot water and 
alcohol, and precipitated by a watery solution of acetate of lead* 
It is easily decomposed by mineral acids and partly by organic 
acids, and is soluble in ammonia with an intense yellow, 
colour. It is not, however, as yet certain that the glucoside is 
the principle to which the poisonous properties of the plant are 
due. A poisonous principle has been found also in other 
species of this genus, and of the allied genera, Oxylobium and 
Gompholobiuni , and also in Isotropis striata, Benth. 
Another veteran German pharmacist has passed away, in 
Dr. August Wiggers, Professor of Pharmacy in the University 
of Gottingen. The deceased was in his seventy-seventh year, 
and his jubilee was celebrated about two years since. From 
France, too, the death is reported of M. Baudrimont, Professor 
of Chemistry to the Faculty of Sciences, Bordeaux, at the age 
of seventy-four years. 
The revived interest in the subject of the artificial produc- 
tion of the diamond, provoked by Mr. Mactear’s experiment, 
has been intensified by the communication made by Mr. 
Hannay to the Royal Society, at its last meeting in February. 
Mr. Hannay, continuing his researches in respect to the solu- 
bility of solids in gases, made numerous experiments with dif- 
ferent forms of carbon in vapours that he thought most probable 
to act as solvents, in the hope that from one of them the carbon 
might be redeposited in a crystalline form. These experi- 
ments, Mr. Hannay says, were unsuccessful ; but it was 
noticed that, when a gas containing carbon and hydrogen 
was heated under pressure in presence of certain metals, its 
hydrogen was attracted by the metal and the carbon was set 
free. Ultimately, the operation was conducted in the presence 
of a “stable nitrogen compound,” and, under these conditions, 
Mr. Hannay says that, “ when the whole is near a red heat, 
and under very high pressure, the carbon is so acted upon by 
the nitrogen compound that it is obtained in the clear, trans- 
parent form of the diamond.” At any rate, there seems to be 
no doubt that some minute crystalline fragments submitted 
with the paper as the product of such an operation were 
really identical with the natural diamond. The stable 
nitrogen compound used was not specified, but Professor 
Dewar pointed out the analogy between such a reaction and 
the production of graphite by heating a cyanide in caustic 
soda to a low red heat. These statements, so interesting to 
scientific men, are probably not altogether comfortable to 
diamond owners, but it will be somewhat reassuring to 
them to learn that the cost of producing diamonds arti- 
ficially still far exceeds the market value of the product. 
How to effect the dissociation of the “elements” — and 
especially of the metalloids — is a problem still occupying the 
attention of scientific men. According to Nature (11th 
March), M. Pictet, who two years since liquefied oxygen, 
starting with the fact that none of the metalloids, with the 
exception, perhaps, of oxygen, has yet been detected in the 
sun, infers that their absence is due to dissociation, and pro- 
poses to attempt to reproduce the conditions under which 
this takes place. This he would do by means of an enormous 
parabolic mirror, in the focus of which the sun’s rays should 
be concentrated upon the metalloids which it is sought to 
decompose. Some of the data for working out this problem 
are known, and assuming that to dissociate bromine would 
require “ a hundred times as much heat (at the temperature 
of its dissociation point) as water vapour requires (at its 
dissociation point) to split it up,” M. Pictet calculates that a 
gram of bromine would need 350 calorics to resolve it into its 
elements, and that to dissociate one gram per minute would 
require that the solar rays should be concentrated by a mirror 
of at least thirty-five square metres of surface. 
lectures, &t. 
At a meeting of sections B, C, and D, held at the Royal Society’s 
Hall, on the 3rd May, Mr. Blackett read a short paper on “A 
method of purifying water for domestic and manufacturing 
purposes.” The method is due to Mr. Birkmyre, of South 
Yarra, and consists of the use of tersulphate of alumina as a 
precipitant of all organic and earthy matters. It is readily 
soluble in water, and of a harmless nature, requiring but a 
small quantity to purify the water, 1 oz being ample for 400 
gals, of water, the precipitate formed completely subsiding in 
twenty-four hours, leaving the water as colourless as if dis- 
tilled. The alumina combines with the organic matters, and 
carries down mechanically all earthy matter that may be in 
