Am.  Jour.  Pbarra.\ 
February,  1896.  / 
Kola  and  Kolanin. 
potassium  hydrate  and  ammonia.  Its  alkaline  solution  is  red-brown 
when  cold,  but  becomes  red  on  warming.  Its  alcohol  solutions  do 
not  act  upon  salts  of  iron,  but  are  precipitated  by  plumbic  acetate. 
Upon  sublimation,  this  product  gives  out  an  empyreumatic  oil  and 
traces  of  caffeine.  Upon  boiling  with  dilute  hydrochloric  acid  it  is 
not  dissolved,  but  partly  decomposed  into  glucose  and  caffeine.  As 
above  noted,  it  is  partly  broken  up  by  continued  boiling  in  water, 
and  completely  by  boiling  in  a  dilute  sulphuric  acid,  20  per  cent, 
strength.  Knebel,  in  his  article,  demonstrates  that  the  glucoside, 
kept  at  a  temperature  of  6o°-70c  C.  for  twenty-four  hours,  is  de- 
composed into  its  components,  viz.:  caffeine,  glucose  and  a  third 
product,  non-nitrogenous  coloring  matter,  which  he  namesMa  roth. 
In  his  work  he  demonstrates  the  molecular  proportions  of  these 
constituents.  Kolanin  is  also  decomposed  by  the  action  of  the  fer- 
ment of  the  kola,  kolazym  by  the  action  of  the  ferments  of  the 
saliva  and  of  the  gastric  juice. 
The  crude  method  pursued  by  the  writer  in  the  habitat  when 
working  upon  the  undried  nuts  was  to  extract  the  finely  chopped 
nuts  with  ether,  allow  the  ether  to  partly  evaporate,  then  extract 
both  the  nut  and  ethereal  residue  with  chloroform.  In  the  chloro- 
form extraction  the  caffeine  was  to  be  found,  in  the  ethereal  solution 
of  the  glucoside.  This  process  was  first  devised  as  a  field  expedient, 
where  the  laboratory  was  carried  on  a  mule's  back.  Its  use  was 
afterwards  verified  in  the  home  laboratory.  In  practice  it  was  found 
that  ether  extracted  the  water  and  the  glucoside  and  some  caffeine, 
but  left  behind  some  alkaloid;  hence,  the  farther  extraction  with 
chloroform  was  necessary.  It  was  also  found  that,  if  the  nuts  were 
chopped  under  ether,  alcohol  or  other  liquid,  v/ithout  allowing  expo- 
sure to  air  and  drying,  only  a  faint  reaction  for  alkaloid  would  result ; 
whereas,  if  the  nuts  were  broken  open  and  allowed  to  dry  or  partly 
dry,  quite  a  crop  of  crystals  could  be  separated.  In  subsequent  ex- 
periments it  was  found  that  all  manipulations  which  involved  the  use 
of  heat — such  as  allowing  the  nuts  to  partly  or  fully  dry — cutting 
them  open  resulted  in  quite  an  increase  of  alkaloid  crystals ;  also 
that,  when  great  care  was  used,  with  little  exposure  to  air,  the  avoid- 
ance of  heat  in  all  stages  of  the  process,  the  amount  of  alkaloid  was 
apparently  much  less.  This  was  afterward  confirmed  when,  in  at- 
tempting to  separate  the  glucoside,  it.  was  found  that  processes  involv- 
ing heat  and  exposure  to  air  provoked  the  breaking  up  of  the  glucoside. 
