VEGETABLES AS THE SOURCES OF ARTIFICIAL ALKALOIDS. 
55 
aniline among the bases, but they appeared to contain neither it nor quinoline. They 
resembled the preceding series pretty closely therefore, but whether they will prove 
identical with them or not I am at present unable to say. 
Distillation of JVood. 
Through the kindness of Mr. Turnbull, an extensive manufacturer of pyroligneous 
acid in this city, I was enabled to examine considerable quantities of the crude acid 
liquor obtained from the destructive distillation of beech, oak, ash and other hard 
woods. The stems and the larger branches of these trees are alone employed for this 
purpose. 1 was astonished to find that these liquors contained scarcely a trace of 
ammonia or any other organic bases. The woody portions therefore of the stems 
and trunks of trees appear to be almost entirely devoid of nitrogenous matter, in 
which respect they exhibit a remarkable contrast to peat. 
This circumstance appears to me as perhaps calculated to throw some light upon 
a question of great interest to geologists, viz. the origin of the coal-beds. Whether 
therefore have the coal-beds been formed by the submersion of whole forrests and 
the floating of uprooted timber into estuaries and lakes, or whether are they due to 
the submersion of beds of peat ? Now irrespective of all other considerations which 
might be urged in favour of the latter opinion, I would remark that the amount of 
nitrogen in coal, and consequently the quantity of ammonia and other bases which it 
yields when destructively distilled, are very considerable, constituting in fact an ex- 
tensive branch of chemical manufacture. Wood, however, as we have just seen, 
appears to be quite incapable of furnishing the amount of nitrogen which we find 
existing in coal. Peat, on the other hand, from the quantity of ammonia and other 
bases which it yields when destructively distilled, is capable of furnishing more than 
the required amount of ammonia. This circumstance appears therefore highly con- 
firmatory of the opinion, that the true source of coal is only to be sought for in peat. 
As was already observed, I expected to have been able to procure from peat, in 
addition to ammonia, aniline, quinoline, picoline and the other coal bases. I did 
not find these however, but merely an analogous series of bases. I can only account 
for this lesult on the assumption that the different genera of plants, when destruc- 
tively distilled, yield different series of organic bases. This we already know to be 
the case in several instances ; for when indigo or any of the indigoferse are destruc- 
tively distilled, they yield ammonia and aniline ; tobacco leaves, when similarly treated, 
yield ammonia and nicotine ; the different species of the Peruvian bark, quinoline, 
and beans, wheat, oil-cake, &c., as we have already seen, do not yield aniline and 
quinoline, but are analogous series of bases. I am induced to believe therefore that 
the reason why modern peat does not yield the identical bases found in coal is, be- 
cause the peat beds of primitive times, which in the course of ages have been con- 
verted into coal, were formed from the decaying remains of quite different plants 
than the various species of Erica and those other vegetables which constitute the peat 
