ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS. 
tile liquids, or for substances with which it would be improper 
to use a metallic instrument. 
All that is necessary is, to place in the neck of your adapter 
a piece of raw cotton, and upon this the vegetable substance 
in coarse powder, or, better, mashed in a mill and the fibrous 
parts well divided; if very fine, it becomes pasty and does not 
absorb readily. Then saturate it with your menstruum; by 
this is meant, that the vegetable matter, by incorporating or 
being moistened with the liquid, shall have imbibed a suffi- 
ciency that it will retain, not allowing any to drain off, except 
upon an additional portion being added to it; permit this con- 
tact for a few hours, then commence to displace the liquid 
by a convenient quantity of the same vehicle slowly added 
to the mass, and this in turn by another, until the desired 
quantity is obtained. In this manner the whole of the soluble 
principles are driven off, leaving a tasteless, inert mass. 
The first that passes is very concentrated, and trickles 
slowly by drops, becoming less dense and weaker at each 
successive affusion, until near the end very little is left to be 
dissolved, as evinced by the following experiment of Messrs. 
Boullay. 
Four ounces of bruised gray bark treated by displacement 
with 5 affusions of water, amounting to 2% pounds, furnished 
the following products: 
1st liquid, 3 drachms, 48 grs. dry extract. 
2d " " 65 " " " 
3d " " 15 " " " 
4th " " 9 " " " 
5th " " 7 " " " 
Total 5 drachms, 16 grs. 
The use of a common funnel has been objected to, on ac- 
count of its shape, from its distended sides, and consequent 
unequal pressure. But though this horizontal action has not 
been thought profitable, yet Mr. Emile Mouchon, an apo- 
thecary of Lyons, proves this supposition erroneous, from the 
