210 
THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
[September 14,1672, 
the intermediate oxide = 3-44 of manganese. The plant 
itself would therefore afford 0T1 per cent, of the metal. 
Eriophorum vaginatum , L., yielded when dried 2-8 per 
cent, of ash, from which Willing* obtained 3-74 per cent, 
of oxide of manganese. Supposing it was the intermediate 
oxide, I calculate 2-7 per. cent of the metal; that is to 
say, 0-075 per cent, of the plant itself. Ramdohr’s analy¬ 
sis of Secale cornutumf enables me to calculate that 
its ash contained 2-14 per cent, of metal or 0-06 per cent, 
with regard to the drug. 
Yet the most striking accumulation of manganese 
oyer observed in plants has been pointed out by Gorup- 
Lesanez in Trapa natans , L. J If we calculate the 
analysis performed in his laboratory, we find that that 
plant, as collected in a tank near Nuremberg, contains 
no less than 1 *G 1 to 1-68 of manganese; the hard peri¬ 
carp of the fruit only 0'53 per cent. Wittstein’s analy¬ 
sis of the ashes of several plants § may be reckoned to 
afford the following percentages of manganese as con¬ 
tained in the dried plants or their parts, viz., TJsnea bar- 
hata Hoffm., grown on Junes 0-05 ; leaves of Betula alba, 
L., 0T6, wood of the same tree only 0-018. In Witt- 
stein s laboratory the seeds of the beech (Fagus) were 
proved to be rich in manganese ; || the shells contain 
0-13, the kernels 0-28 per cent, of it. This has been 
corroborated by qualitative estimation by Braun** and 
De Try.ft 
Hops, according to Wheeler’s researches,furnish an 
illustration of the variability of the amount of man¬ 
ganese in one and the same drug. Among 12 sorts of 
hops of English, German, and Bohemian origin, he met 
v.ith that metal only in the English specimen, which 
contained 0'09 per cent, of the metal. It is in ac¬ 
cordance with. these results, that I found the lupulinic 
glands (Lupulin) devoid of manganese. 
Pa din a Pavonia, Lamour, is said §§ to contain the 
astonishing- amount of 8 per cent, of manganese, 
a statement which certainly requires further investiga¬ 
tion ; the small specimens of that sea-weed in my 
herbarium yielded me no very sure traces of man¬ 
ganese, when examined on platinum wire. The same 
must be said with regard to Padina, collected for me at 
La Mortola, near Mentone, on the Mediterranean. In 
another fine specimen of the same seaweed, kindly sent 
by Mr. T. B. Groves from Weymouth, South of England, 
the presence of manganese was more evident. Yet on 
incineration of from 5 to 10 grammes of it, the amount 
ot that metal proved to be so insignificant, that I alto¬ 
gether failed in estimating it quantitatively. I cannot, 
therefore, reckon Padina Pavonia among the plants rich 
m manganese. 
The. ash of another sea-weed, the officinal Carra¬ 
geen, did not at all colour carbonate of sodium in the 
oxidizing flame. 
. Some other analyses of ashes, containing manganese, 
m vhich the quantities of this metal were estimated, are 
w me ^ i n a recent very exhaustive work— 
\\ olfi s ‘ Aschenanalysen,’ etc., Berlin, 1871; 4to. 
The above numbers will be found sufficient to illus¬ 
trate my estimation of manganese in cardamoms. This 
metal has moreover been shown qualitatively to be pre¬ 
sent in numerous plants, although all these facts do not 
as yet enable us to trace clearly the part it plays in the 
vegetable kingdom. 
I examined, nevertheless, some other parts of plants 
i by means only of the qualitative test. As to Cinchona 
barks, I can fully confirm the statement that they con¬ 
tain a small amount of manganese, but I was unable 
to find it in the seeds of several species, or in the isolated 
liber-fibres, as for instance of Cinchona boliviana. Secale 
\ cornutum furnished a green bead with carbonate of sodium. 
, Trapa natans , collected by myself in Switzerland (whero 
it is a very rare plant) corroborated the above statements 
of Gorup-Besanez; a small fragment of it, which fur¬ 
nishes a microscopic residue of ash, is sufficient to 
j demonstrate brilliantly on platinum wire the presence- 
| of manganese. 
Pepper,, both black and white, hemp fruits, Lycopodium 
(the officinal spores), the leaves of Lobelia injlata contain 
manifestly some manganese. Lichen islandicus is leso 
evidently provided with it.* Liamala of unusual purity 
is not to be mentioned with certainty among the drug3 
containing- manganese. I was not able to prove its pre¬ 
sence in a specimen affording no more than 1.3 per cent, 
ot. ash. Commercial kamala is usually contaminated 
with a. large amount of inorganic matter ;f to such 
contamination may be attributed the circumstance that 
I Leube found 0-14 per cent, of manganese in the ash of 
kamala which he analysed.7 One of the small capitules^ 
or a fragment of the pedicel of JFormsed is sufficient to- 
demonstrate the presence of that metal. 
Manganese being so -widely diffused throughout the 
vegetable kingdom, it is of some interest also to- 
pomt. out [those plants or drugs in which it i^ 
v anting, or at least occurs only in quantities so ex¬ 
tremely small that the test which I made use of fails - 
in repealing it. The following are examples of this 
class furnishing no manganese, viz. : Allspice (Fructus 
Pimento), Semen Colchici , S. Cydonice, S. Lini , S. Psyllii, 
v (k?th black and white), S. Sinapis alba, and’ 
<S. Sinapis nigra, S. Stramonu. Tinnivelly Senna leaves 
as well as well as Guaiacim wood are also free from- 
manganese. Lupulin has already been stated to be so 
likewise. 
It would be desirable '.to have a full list of drugs- 
stating where manganese is present or not. This in¬ 
vestigation will, I hope, be performed by some zealous' 
student of pharmacy; it would form at the same time- 
a valuable contribution to the history of that metal. I 
need scarcely say, that great care must continually be¬ 
taken for most perfectly cleaning the platinum before 
every experiment. This, however, is easily done by- 
shaking off the fusing bead of sodium carbonate and 
lepeating this process till no trace of green is to be 
observed not only on the loop but on the entire piece 
ot wire used. 
* Will’s ‘ Jahresbericht der Chemie,’ I860, 636. 
T ‘ Jahresbericht der Pharmacie’ of Wiggers, 1857 7 
118 (1861^223 der Chemie Und Pharmacie ’ °’ f ^ebig, etc., 
§ ‘ Jahresbericht.der Chemie,’ 1862, 510. 
|| In his ‘ Yierteljabresschrift,’ xiii. (1864) 338 
(lWm SOhrift f “ r anal ^ ische ° f Fresenius, vi. 
ft Pbarm. Journ., Jan. 21, (1871), 53. 
It ‘Jahresbericht der Chemie ’(1865), 636. 
§§ In Meyer, ‘ Agriculturchemie ’ Heidelberg, (1870), 269. 
(Bath) : Is it not probable that the pre¬ 
sence and quantity of mang-anese is much more deter¬ 
mined by the strata on which the plants are grown, than 
by any peculiarity of the natural orders ? Professor 
Church, some two. or three years ago examined the- 
vegetation of the lias, which contains a quanitv of man¬ 
ganese, and he found that the forest trees, the herbage,, 
and, in fact,, all the vegetation contained a very appre¬ 
ciablequantity of manganese also. There was not much 
variation. It seemed to be regulated more by vigour of 
giowth than by natural orders, and this is rather ai) 
variance with the views of the author of the paper. He- 
thinks that certain natural orders have greater affinities- 
tor taking up this metal than others. 
• 1 ^*bi9 agrees the fact that in Wittstein’s analysis of 
Lichen islandicus, in the ‘Jahresbericht der Chemie’ (1862), 
510, manganese is not mentioned among the constituents of 
its ash. 
n . paper i! ? Pharmaceutical Journal, ix. 
(lob/), 280; the new kind of the drug there figured affords 
no manganese. 
. + Wittstein’s ‘ Vierteljahresschrift ’ ix. (1860), 321: also, 
in the Jahresbericht’ of Wiggers (1860), 73. 
