REPORT ON CHEMISTRY. 
499 
same compound radical, does not appear probable; but the 
facts to be stated respecting benzule render it highly probable 
that the three compounds here classed along with it have the 
same radical as the camphoric acid. 
Does the azote in vegetable alkalies constitute ammonia ?— 
4°. It has been found that the vegetable alkalies, so far as they 
have been examined with care, contain, as an essential consti¬ 
tuent, a considerable quantity of nitrogen; and the question 
early suggested itself—Does the nitrogen in these salt bases 
exist in the form of ammonia ? If so, it would be easy to under¬ 
stand why they exhibit alkaline properties. The experiments 
of Pelletier and Dumas appeared to supply a negative answer 
to the question, as well as the later ones of Liebig, who found 
that though brucine and strychnine are completely decomposed 
by nitric acid, yet ammonia is not one of the products. But 
there are other circumstances which are considerably in favour 
of the opposite opinion. Thus, in the six vegetable alkalies, 
morphine, narcotine, strychnine, brucine, quinine, and cincho¬ 
nine, Liebig found that each atom contained one atom of ni¬ 
trogen ; and that thus the saturating power of each was in pro¬ 
portion to the amount of that element which it contained. The 
sulphates he found also to contain two atoms of water *, corre¬ 
sponding exactly to the quantity of water found by Mitscherlich 
to exist in the crystallizable salts of ammonia with the oxacids. 
These coincidences are extremely curious ; and though they 
prove nothing, yet they show that we are not yet in a state to 
answer the question, definitively, whether the vegetable alkalies 
do really contain ammonia or not. 
Are vegetable principles educts or products ? —5°. I shall 
only advert to one other point, on which considerable doubt 
will probably for a long time remain. I have already stated 
how numerous the proximate principles of the vegetable king¬ 
dom—acid, alkaline, and indifferent—with which we are ac¬ 
quainted, have already become, and the rapidity with which 
their number is increasing. In regard to them, also, an inter¬ 
esting question arises;—Do they all exist ready formed in the 
vegetables from which they are extracted, or are they not often 
the product of the lengthened processes by which they are ob¬ 
tained ? There is one test by which we can scarcely be deceived 
in determining this point. When the principle extracted pos¬ 
sesses the virtues of the plant from which it is prepared, the 
probability is very great that it exists ready elaborated in the 
natural state of the vegetable. When it possesses no such 
* The sulphate of strychnine he has since found may be obtained in an an¬ 
hydrous state.— Pogg. xxi. p. 487. 
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