478 DR. JOHN STENHOUSE ON THE OILS PRODUCED BY THE ACTION 
0-3155 grm. salt dried m vacuo, gave 0-664 carbonic acid and 0-120 water. 
0-336 grm. salt dried in vacuo, gave 0-419 double chloride of Pt and ammonia. 
Calculated numbers. 
Found numbers 
C 34 
57-01 
57-08 
H 14 
4-06 
4-22 
N 2 
7-74 
06 
0 14 
31-19 
30-88 
100-00 
100-00 
The formula of this salt therefore is C30 Hig N2 O6+2C2 O3+2HO. It is the binoxa- 
late of fucusine with two equivalents of water. The neutral oxalate is much more 
soluble than the acid salt, but the crystalline form of both salts is the same. 
The perfect isomerism which subsists between furfurol and fucusol, extending as it 
does to the products of their decomposition, is certainly not a little astonishing, and 
may perhaps induce some chemists still to regard them as identical substances. I was, 
in fact, for a long time inclined to the same opinion, and it was only after a careful 
comparative examination of both oils, and especially of their respective bases, that I 
was led to conclude that they are only very analogous, but not identieal compounds. 
Oil from 3Ioss. 
A quantity of common Sphagnum was digested in a distilling apparatus with dilute 
sulphuric acid, exactly in the way already so fully described. It yielded a considerable 
quantity of an oil, which, so far as I could judge, is identical with fucusol. It formed 
amide with ammonia, which, when it was boiled with an alkaline lye, yielded a similar 
difficultly crystallizable base, whose double platinum salt crystallized in the same thin 
flat prisms as those of fucusine. 
Oil from Lichens. 
A quantity of Lichen Islandicum, along with several species of Usnea, RamaVmia 
fraxinea, &e., were also digested with sulphuric acid. They yielded an oil which ap- 
peared to be identical with fucusol, judging from its characters and those of its amide, 
base and platinum salt. 
Oil from Ferns. 
The common fern, Pteris aquiUna, when digested with sulphuric acid, also yielded 
an oil which formed an amide and a base, crystallizing readily in long slender needles, 
closely resembling those of furfurine. I felt at first much inclined to regard this oil 
as identical with furfurol, but as the double platinum salt of its base does not cry- 
stallize in the same form as the corresponding salt of furfurine, but in broad flat prisms, 
I strongly suspect that it is different from both fucusol and furfurol. 
The results of the preceding investigation, imperfect as they confessedly are, seem 
tome to indicate some curious botanical relations; for it appears highly probable 
that the ynatiere incrust ante, ox some such principle, is the same in all phanerogamous 
