382 
EDITORIAL. 
ceived. The foreign deposits (those from this country for instance) 
will not be charged with duty, and will be received through the custom- 
houses at London, Liverpool, Bristol, Hull, Newcastle, Dover, Folke- 
stone and Southampton. 
The exhibitors pay all expenses until the articles are deposited, but 
none after till the exhibition closes, when they may remove them 
from the country, or sell them, in which case the duties must be 
paid. 
The Exhibition will open on the 1st of May and continue open for 
six months. 
Tilden's Extract of Conium. — In our last number we gave the 
results of an examination of several of the extracts prepared in vacuo, 
by Tilden & Co., of New Lebanon, N. Y., with some suggestions cal- 
culated to improve their quality. Since then we have received from 
those gentlemen a bottle of Extract of Conium made in accordance 
with those suggestions. 
The odor of this extract when opened is heavy and narcotic, re- 
minding one of the bruised plant, though different; its color is dark 
brown without a trace of green, the chlorophylle having been removed ; 
its consistence is nearly that proper for pills, adhesive and not pulpy 
like that before described. When triturated a short time with twice 
its weight of water, the whole is dissolved, except a small proportion 
of brown sediment. When mixed with an excess of potassa in solu- 
tion, the odor of conia becomes strongly perceptible, with but little of 
the ammoniacal odor' previously noticed in the green extract under 
the same treatment. When a strong solution of the extract, mixed 
with potassa, was distilled, the distillate consisted of a saturated 
solution of conia and some volatile oil, with numerous globules of the 
alkaloid floating on its surface. By a comparison with a similar ex- 
periment made two years ago with English extract of conium, the 
apparent yield was greater in this instance, which is probably due to 
the absence of the albumen and coloring matter in Tilden's, which 
increases its strength, admitting that the plants in each case possessed 
equal medicinal force. 
In a pharmaceutical point of view, Messrs. Tilden & Co. have ac- 
complished the object of their wishes, viz., a perfect vegetable extract 
in which the active principle of the plant is found in a concentrated 
form, unimpaired by the manipulation to which it has been subjected. 
In reference to the therapeutic value of this extract, the brief time 
it has been in our possession does not justify any decided opinion. It 
is now in the hands of an experienced practitioner accustomed to 
observe closely the effects of medicines, and so far the results of the 
trials made are quite favorable to the quality of the extract. Our 
