56 
THE CHEMIST AND DRUGGIST. 
November, 1882. 
and cocoa butter. Linseed meal enters into the composition 
of 5 out of the 6 official cataplasma. The varying strengths 
of the pieparations were then given in tabular form. The 
lecturer, in conclusion, referred to the new Act that the Board 
of Pharmacy are preparing. They were sparing no pains in 
laying the foundations of the profession, but the veterans of 
pharmacy in our colony will soon be passing away, and we are 
in danger of having to fill their places with men lacking their 
matured experience and professional attainments. Especially 
we should study scientific methods of working, and put forth 
a great effort to rescue our profession from the hands of ignorant 
quacks. Mr. Wright thanked the members of the Pharmaceu- 
tical Council for their kindness in presiding at the various 
lectures, and the Technical College Committee for the use of 
their hall. Mr. W. Larmer said that the lecture was at once 
the last and the best of the series. A more practical, instruc- 
tive, and entertaining lecture he had never had the pleasure of 
listening to. The lucid manner in which the subject was 
handled by the lecturer did him great credit, and he was sorry 
that so admirable an address was delivered to so comparatively 
small an audience. In the name of the Pharmaceutical Council 
he thanked Mr. Wright for the manner in which he had dis- 
charged his duty as their lecturer during the late session. We 
are given to understand from the president of the Pharmaceu- 
tical Society that the standard of qualification for chemists 
and druggists is being steadily raised, and no expense will be 
spared in placing a thorough knowledge of their business 
within the reach of every registered apprentice. The society’s 
library is the finest of its kind in the southern hemisphere, and 
as soon as the Act to amend the present Poisons Act is passed 
a school of pharmacy will probably be formed, when public 
lectures will be delivered upon all subjects relating to pharma- 
ceutical chemistry. 
DEFINITION OF A NEW SPECIES OF EUCALYPTUS; 
By Baron Yon Mueller, K.C.M.G., M. & Ph.D., 
F.R.S., F.G.S., &c. 
In the vegetation of all Australia the eucalypts are of higher 
interest to the pharmaceutic profession than any other generic 
group of plants ; and this importance is enhanced by the wide 
and copious distribution of this genus over all parts of our 
great southern continent. As shrubs, and still oftener as trees, 
the eucalypts offer on many places material in extraordinary 
vastness for the collection of kino or tannic sap, as well as for 
the distillation of oil, irrespective of their affording such 
factory-products, as tar, pitch, kreosote, potash, acetic acid, 
alcohol and various dyes, which come not generally within the 
immediate province of pharmacists, not to speak of the ready 
and very payable gathering of the tiny seeds of the leading 
timber-yielding and anti-miasmatic species for demands 
abroad. It is however of moment, that the particular pro- 
perties of the very numerous species of this genus should be 
much further investigated locally, than has hitherto been pos- 
sible ; for although mainly through Mr. Bosisto’s enterprising 
exertions the oil of several kinds of eucalypts became accessible 
to the whole pharmaceutical world, and also to special branches 
of technological industry, there remains yet much to be learned 
even in this respect by additional researches, particularly on 
species occurring only in regions as yet scantily settled or 
hitherto not even colonised. Certainly numerous species of 
eucalyptus have become well defined botanical ly during the 
last ninety years, but many others remained imperfectly 
known, and in all likelihood a few absolutely new kinds will 
yet be discovered. A wish is therefore expressed on this 
occasion, that these highly useful kinds of trees should become 
the subject of special studies by medical or pharmaceutical 
practitioners, particularly in outlying districts, so that bio- 
morphically and geographically the range of each congener 
may be traced. To give an instance of the characteristics, on 
which mainly the distinctions of forms in this genus is depend- 
ing, the diagnosis of a yet unrecorded species is subjoined . Notes 
on stature, bark, wood, geologic relation, time of flowering, form 
of young seedlings, and other details not observable in trans- 
mitted specimens, facilitate the recognition of specific forms 
in this very intricate genus. 
Eucalyptus Foelscheana. 
A dwarf tree, or only of shrubby growth ; branchlets 
robust, not angular ; leaves scattered or exceptionally oppo- 
site, on rather short stalks, ovate or verging into a roundish 
form, sometimes very large, always of firm consistence, blunt 
or at the summit slightly pointed, greyish-green on both sides, 
not much paler beneath ; their primary veins very divergent 
or almost horizontally spreading, numerous and thus closely 
approximated, but subtle and therefore not prominent ; the 
circumferential vein contiguous to the margin of the leaf ; oil- 
dots concealed or obliterated ; umbels four to six-flowered or 
rarely three-flowered, forming a terminal panicle ; calyces 
pear-shaped, on longish or rarely short stalks, faintly angular, 
not shining ; lid not so broad as the tube of the calyx, very 
depressed or sometimes conspicuously raised towards the 
centre, tearing off in an irregular transverse line, long retained 
and soon reflexed from the last point of adherence ; stamens all 
fertile, bent inward before expansion ; filaments yellowish- 
white, some of the outer dilated towards the base ; anthers 
(when fresh) almost cuneate-ovate or the inner more oblong 
and the outer slightly cordate, all bursting anteriorely by 
longitudinal slits ; connective reddish, with a slight dorsal 
turgidity towards the summit ; style much exceeded in 
length by the stamens ; stigma not dilated ; fruit large, 
urceolar, not angular ; valves generally four, nearly deltoid, 
inserted much below the narrow edge of the fruit, at last 
deeply enclosed ; fertile seeds large, terminated by a con- 
spicuous membrane ; sterile seeds very slender. 
Near Port Darwin, on sandy soil ; Mr. Paul Foelsche. Found 
also in other northern portions of Arnhem’s Land, by Mr. J. 
M‘Kinlay. Specimens without fruit, brought by R. Brown in 
1802, during Captain Flinders’ expedition from Carpentaria, 
may also belong to E. Foelscheana , although the leaves pass 
into a lanceolar form. 
The species, above defined, is flowering already at the 
height of 18 inches (as is the case also with I?, cordata and 
E. rer7iicosa) f therefore when still quite young, producing then 
a comparatively large cluster of blossoms ; the full grown tree 
seldom exceeds a height of 20 feet, and always remains of cripply 
stature. Stem-diameter to nine inches, or rarely more ; bark, 
dark grey, rough ; leaves of young plants often twice or even 
thrice the size of those of old trees. E. Foelscheana belongs 
to the series exemplified by E. tcrminalis. In some respects 
it is allied to E. latifolia : the leaves however are larger and 
not decurrent at the base ; the petioles are comparatively 
shorter and, as well as the branchlets, less slender ; the 
peduncles and pedicels are thicker and less angular ; the 
calyces larger, not roundish-blunt at the base, and therefore 
not passing suddenly into a pedicel of upwards unincreased 
thickness ; the fruit is much larger, at least twice as long 
as broad ; and considerably contracted towards the sum- 
mit, thus not almost semiovate ; the flowers of the real E. 
latifolia are as yet unknown, and may prove different from 
those of the E. Foelscheana , though their anthers, seen as 
remnants, show the same form. 
EXAMINATION OF A SO-CALLED “ NON-ALCOHOLIC 
WINE.” 
(By Edward Lloyd Marks, Lecturer on Chemistry 
and Botany, School of Mines, Sandhurst.) 
A bottle of such wine having been submitted for examina- 
tion, a portion was carefully distilled from a new flask into a 
new receiver, until about half the quantity was condensed. 
Some of the distillate warmed in a test tube gave off an 
inflammable vapour, burning with an almost colourless flame. 
To another portion some solid iodine was added, together with 
hydrate of sodium ; to a third a solution of iodine and the 
alkali ; in both cases a yellow crystalline precipitate shortly 
subsided, showing under the microscope most beautiful stellate 
plates of iodoform (CHI.,)* According to the equation in 
Attfield's Chemistry , the text-book for my pupils (C 2 H 6 0) -f- 
4 (I 2 ) + 6 (N'a HO) = (CHI 3 ) + 5 (N'a I') + (N'a CHOJ 
+ 6 (B' 2 0"). 
23rd October, 1882. 
THE CAUSE OF CONSUMPTION. 
Mr. Ellery, F.R.S., president of the Royal Society, made the 
following observations upon the recent discoveries in relation 
to the cause of tuberculosus. Allusion is made to Mr. Wm. 
Thomson’s writings and theories published some years ago 
in a work entitled, Histo- Chemistry and Pathogeny of 
Tubercle. Koch’s microscopic researches would seem to give 
strong support, if not proof, of the assumption that tuber- 
culosus is the result of a materia morbi in the form of a 
