VEGETABLES AS THE SOURCES OF ARTIFICIAL ALKALOIDS. 
53 
It is rather singular that the amount of carbon and hydrogen does not vary more, 
while the boiling-points of these bases, or not improbably mixture of bases, are so 
exceedingly different. They all form double salts with chlorides of gold and platinum. 
Those with the highest boiling-points do not crystallize so readily as the less volatile 
bases, and are apt to be contaminated with resinous matter. As the height of their 
boiling-points rises, the solubility of the bases in water diminishes. They all appear to 
possess equally strong basic properties. Their detailed examination must however 
be reserved for a future communication. 
As the PhaseoUs communis was selected as the representative of that numerous 
tribe of plants, the Leguminosse, of which the various kinds of beans, peas, lentils, 
&c. are the most familiar examples, the next substance subjected to distillation was 
oil-cake, or the dried seeds of Linum usitatissimum, from which the fat oil had been 
expressed. Oil-cake was selected as the type of the numerous class of plants in 
which the starch of the Grand neee is replaced by oil. Of these, the poppy, rape, 
mustard, &c. are the best known. They are all very rich in vegetable albumen. 
The oil-cake was broken into moderate-sized pieces and distilled in the same cylinders 
as were employed for the beans. The quantity on which I operated was about two 
hundred weight. It yielded, as might have been expected, a smaller amount of 
liquid products than the beans. Their odour was peculiarly offensive. They con- 
sisted of acetone, acetic acid, a great deal of tar and empyreumatic oils. The quan- 
tity of ammonia was also exceedingly great. I was however disappointed to find 
that the organic bases were much less than in the case of the beans, amounting to 
not more than a third of what they yielded. The only way in which I can account 
for this different result, is from the greatly higher temperature at which the oil-cake 
was distilled, the heat not being mitigated, as in the case of the beans, by the presence 
of much moisture. Now, as all these volatile alkaloids are when highly heated re- 
solved into ammonia, I think there is every reason to conclude, that in this, as in 
many other instances, a large portion of the bases which would have been generated 
at a lower temperature, were either not formed at all, or were destroyed immediately 
after their formation. The large amount of ammonia and the deficiency of the other 
bases is thus very naturally accounted for. The bases from oil-cake were separated 
and purified by similar methods to those employed for the preceding bases. They 
also formed a different series from either the coal or the bone bases, as they contained 
neither aniline nor quinoline. Their odour also differed considerably from that of 
the bases from beans, which however they closely resembled in other respects ; their 
basic properties were equally decided, and they also formed similar salts. It appears 
probable enough therefore that some of the bases in both series are identical. But 
on this subject I expect to be able to speak more decidedly in a future paper. 
