Contained per cent.
of Cocaine. 
Coca leaves from Mapiri, 1 month old             0.5% \
"       "    "   Yungas    "     "               0.5%  |
"       "    "   Mapiri and Yungas                     |
6 months old             0.4%  |    Of the
"       "    "   Cuzco (Peru)                          |_ weight of
6 months old             0.3%  |   the dry
"       "    "   Mapiri and Yungas                     |   leaves.
1 year old               0.3%  |
"      "     "   Cuzco  " "    "                 0.2%  |
"      "     "   Mapiri and Yungas                     |
2 years old              0.15%/

Coca leaves from Yungas and Cuzco, three years old, contained no trace of the alkaloid, whereas fresh green leaves from Yungas contained 0.7 per cent. of the weight of the dry leaves.  The same process is also applicable for the manufacture of quinine from poor quinine bark, with the single alteration that weak sulphuric acid must be used for the neutralization of the alkaline petroleum extract.—­H.T.  Pfeiffer, Chem.  Zeit. 11.

* * * * *

[Continued from SUPPLEMENT, No. 622, page 9941.]

THE CHEMICAL BASIS OF PLANT FORMS.[1]

By HELEN C. DE S. ABBOTT.

The succession of plants from the lower to the higher forms will be reviewed superficially, and chemical compounds noted where they appear.

When the germinating spores of the fungi, myxomycetes, rupture their walls and become masses of naked protoplasm, they are known as plasmodia.  The plasmodium AEthalium septicum occurs in moist places, on heaps of tan or decaying barks.  It is a soft, gelatinous mass of yellowish color, sometimes measuring several inches in length.

The plasmodium[2] has been chemically analyzed, though not in a state of absolute purity.  The table of Reinke and Rodewold gives an idea of its proximate constitution.

Many of the constituents given are always present in the living cells of higher plants.  It cannot be too emphatically stated that where “biotic” force is manifested, these colloidal or albuminous compounds are found.

The simplest form of plant life is an undifferentiated individual, all of its functions being performed indifferently by all parts of its protoplasm.

The chemical basis of plasmodium is almost entirely composed of complex albuminous substances, and correlated with this structureless body are other compounds derived from them.  Aside from the chemical substances which are always present in living matter, and are essential properties of protoplasm, we find no other compounds.  In the higher organisms, where these functions are not performed indifferently, specialization of tissues is accompanied by many other kinds of bodies.

The algae are a stage higher in the evolutionary scale than the undifferentiated noncellular plasmodium.  The simple Alga protococcus[3] may be regarded as a simple cell.  All higher plants are masses of cells, varying in form, function, and chemical composition.