552 
Ash  of  Flaxseed. 
f  Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
1     Nov.,  1881. 
of  crystals  of  arbutin  in  small  bunches  of  needles,  but  no  crystals 
were  obtained  from  the  alcoholic  solution. 
On  heating  the  mother  liquors  from  arbutin  with  dilute  sulphuric 
acid  some  ericolin  was  obtained  as  a  brown-yellow  resinous  mass.  It 
was  stated  by  Jungmann  to  be  soluble  in  alcohol  but  insoluble  in 
water  and  could  be  purified  by  dissolving  it  in  the  former  and  precip- 
itating by  the  latter.  In  experimenting  with  it,  I  found  it  to  be  sol- 
uble in  both  alcohol  and  water. 
The  leaves  previously  exhausted  with  water  and  dried  were  then 
exhausted  with  strong  alcohol  by  maceration  and  percolation,  and  the 
dark  green  tincture  thus  obtained  was  evaporated,  then  treated  with 
water  and  the  residue  washed  with  ether  and  dissolved  in  hot  alcohol 
which,  on  cooling,  deposited  urson  as  an  apparently  amorphous  mass,, 
but  on  dissolving  in  hot  alcohol  microscopic  needles  were  obtained. 
Concentrated  sulphuric  acid  turns  the  crystals  black,  the  acid  assum- 
ing a  red  color. 
Concentrated  nitric  acid  turns  them  yellow,  giving  off  fumes  of 
nitrous  acid. 
On  distilling  a  quantity  of  the  leaves  with  Avater,  a  distillate  was- 
obtained  which  was  neutral  to  test  paper  and  had  a  tea-like  odor,  prob- 
ably due  to  a  small  amount  of  volatile  oil. 
These  investigations  were  performed  with  specimens  of  each  of  the 
plants,  with  nearly  the  same  results. 
The  organic  constituents  of  these  plants,  as  obtained  by  these  inves- 
tigations,  are  therefore : 
Arbutin,  ericolin,.  urson,  tannic,  gallic  and  malic  acids  (in  Chima- 
phila  maculata,  tannic,  gallic  and  citric  acids),  gum,  sugar,  albumen,, 
a  small  amount  of  volatile  oil  and  some  coloring  matter. 
Ash  of  Flaxseed. — As  a  mean  of  31  analyses  A.  Laudreau  obtained 
3*60  per  cent,  of  ash,  of  which  24'10  per  cent,  with  4'6  per  cent, 
phosphoric  acid  was  soluble  in  water;  71*10  per  cent,  with  27*0  per 
cent,  of  phosphoric  acid  soluble  in  nitric  acid,  and  4*80  per  cent,  of 
silica  and  insoluble  matter.  The  ash  of  Russian  flaxseed  contained 
40  per  cent,  of  phosphoric  acid;  the  ash  of  flaxseed  cultivated  in 
France  decreased  in  phosphoric  acid  to  15  or  20  per  cent,  in  the  second 
year. — Ann,  agronom,,  vi,  p.  315. 
