no Schunck . — The Cheviistry of Chlorophyll. 
state, any of the characteristics of chlorophyll. Its colour is 
entirely different ; its solutions show no trace of absorption- 
bands, the total absence of which is seen in the case of no 
other derivative of chlorophyll ; it is an exceedingly stable 
body, more so than any other colouring matter or derivative 
of a colouring matter that I am acquainted with; it reveals 
in fact no sign or trace of the source whence it was derived. 
And yet the process whereby it is formed cannot be a de- 
structive or a complicated one. A green leaf exposed to 
the vapour of aniline at the ordinary temperature becomes 
brown almost as rapidly as a red rose changes to green in an 
atmosphere charged with ammonia ; the organic structure of 
the leaf, moreover, is not in the least affected. The process 
is so strange and so entirely, I imagine, without analogy as to 
suggest doubts whether it is really living chlorophyll, as I 
call it, and not rather something else that is concerned in 
the formation of anilophyll ; but after much consideration of 
the facts I have found it impossible to arrive at any other 
conclusion than the one I have given. 
That anilophyll probably belongs to the well-known class 
of compounds called anilides is a supposition that would 
naturally occur to any one conversant with modern organic 
chemistry. If so it should like other anilides be decomposed 
by strong acids and alkalis, reproducing the substance from 
which it was originally formed ; we should expect it to yield, 
if not chlorophyll, at least some derivative of the latter, such 
as phyllocyanin. It is capable, however, of resisting the 
action of the strongest acids and alkalis to a remarkable 
degree, as I have stated. In no other derivative of chloro- 
phyll are the original characteristics of the latter so com- 
pletely masked or obliterated as in this. 
That something besides aniline concurs in the formation 
of anilophyll seemed probable from the fact that when green 
leaves are entirely immersed in aniline they remain green, and 
only become brown in the way described on being taken out 
and exposed to the air. Hence it would naturally be inferred 
that the element required to complete the reaction is oxygen. 
