824 
FACTS AND OBSERVATIONS. 
England have often suffered in the same way; but until 
recently America would seem to have been a stranger to the 
malady in its malignant form. Hereafter we may hope to 
receive valuable reports from some of the members of the 
veterinary profession in America, not only upon the extent 
of the disease, but upon its pathology and the secondary 
causes which have been in operation in its production. 
Where these things have not been well understood, or the 
treatment of the animals confided to farriers and uneducated 
cattle doctors, the fatality has reached a large per centage; 
while on the contrary the deaths have been few when scientific 
veterinary surgeons have had the care of the cases. As in 
England and elsewhere, the fever has been found to yield 
only to the supporting and invigorating system; the use of 
depletives invariably protracting the cure, or bringing on a 
fatal result. Thirty thousand horses, according to the latest 
information, are said to be suffering from the malady, and 
the greatest possible inconvenience and heavy losses are being 
sustained for the want of horse labour in transporting goods 
and merchandise. It is even reported that many of the 
European steam-vessels are leaving New York with half 
cargoes. 
Facts and Observations. 
The Crystalline Principle of Aloes. —Natal aloes, 
moistened with spirit and submitted to microscopical exami¬ 
nation, exhibits the presence of crystals of a compound which 
is but slightly soluble in alcohol, so that, on treating the aloes 
with its own weight of that solvent at 120° F., the crystalline 
principle, which the author calls nataloin, is readily obtained 
in a crude state. When purified by crystallisation from hot 
spirit, it forms thin, bright yellow scales, sparingly soluble in 
water, benzol, carbon disulphide, chloroform, and ether. 
Nataloin, C 34 H 38 G 15 , contains no water of crystallisation; it 
melts between 356° and 374-5° F., dissolves in concentrated 
sulphuric acid, and the addition of a crystal of potassium 
nitrate to this solution produces a characteristic bright green 
coloration, rapidly passing through red to blue. Heated 
with nitric acid it is decomposed, yielding oxalic acid with¬ 
out a trace of picric or chrysammic acid, thus showing a re¬ 
markable difference from aloin. The author was unsuccessful 
in his attempts to obtain a bromine substitution-compound; 
