Am.  Jour.  Pharm.  ) 
January,  1920.  ) 
Determining  Pentosans. 
39 
direct  rail  from  Mosul  to  Basrah,  the  exploitation  of  gums  in  this 
country  should  be  possible  in  the  near  future.  An  article  written 
in  1903  in  a  book  about  agriculture  in  the  Bagdad  Vilayet,  states 
that  the  export  from  Bagdad  in  1887  was  641,250  kilograms 
(  =  130  tons)  and  in  1890  it  had  decreased  to  39  tons. 
A  second  kind  of  gum  is  produced  from  a  large  tree  which  grows 
throughout  the  part  of  Kurdistan  now  under  British  occupation. 
The  tree  grows  to  a  great  size,  50  feet  high  and  up  to  8  feet  in  girth. 
It  is  found  scattered  throughout  the  valleys  only,  especially  near  the 
villages  in  the  forests. '  The  tree  produces  edible  fruits,  sold  for 
food  and  extraction  of  oil  in  Mosul,  Bagdad,  and  all  other  local 
markets  of  any  size  in  northern  Mesopotamia,  and  also  this  gum, 
called  "elk"  (elch)  in  Arabic.  The  method  of  tapping  this  elch 
gum^is  by  making  long  incisions  in  the  trunks  of  the  trees,  placing 
some  receptacle  underneath  to  catch  the  exudation.  A  regular 
trade  exists  in  the  Suleimanaya  district  of  Kurdistan,  but  there  is 
none  at  all  in  the  north  of  Kurdistan,  which  falls  in  the  Mosul  Vila- 
yet, although  "Button"  trees  abound  in  the  valleys  of  that  country. 
The  bulk  of  this  elch  gum  is  exported  direct  from  the  Suleimanaya 
district  by  caravan  to  Alleppo,  where  it  is  used  for  sizing  cloth. 
Some  portion  comes  to  Bagdad  city,  and  there  is  no  foreign  export 
from  Bagdad;  it  is  all  used  locally  for  (a)  sizing  cloth,  (6)  in  local 
medicines,  {c)  as  a  local  chewing  gum,  {d)  in  the  manufacture  of 
arrack  liquor  from  dates.  The  price  of  this  gum  in  Bagdad  at 
present  is  Re.  i  .8.0  per  lb.  There  is  no  doubt  that  very  large  amounts 
of  this  gum  could  be  collected  from  the  areas  mentioned,  under 
conditions  similar  to  those  already  described  for  tragacanth. 
A  MODIFICATION  OF  THE  PHBNYLHYDRAZINK  METHOD 
OF  DETERMINING  PENTOSANS.* 
By  Paui^  Menaul  and  C.  T.  DoweIvL. 
Everyone  who  has  made  determinations  of  pentosans  by  the 
phloroglucinol  method  realizes  that  a  shorter  and  less  expensive 
method  is  very  much  needed.  This  is  especially  true  at  this  time 
when  it  is  almost,  if  not  impossible,  to  buy  phloroglucinol  even  at 
*  Reprinted  from  The  Journal  of  Industrial  and  Engineering  Chemistry, 
November,  1919. 
