Abstract
PROBABLY no section of organic chemistry has been A more prolific of results, or has added more to the literature of recent years, than that which has dealt with the vegetable kingdom. So many investigators have been occupied with the so-called active principles of plants, that the task of keeping up acquaintance with current researches is a very laborious one, and there is little cause for surprise if much work in this field is in danger of being overlooked or undervalued. On this account the publication of a work which undertakes to gather together so many scattered papers, and to summarise in a convenient form their most important matter, is likely to be hailed with gratitude by many workers both in organic chemistry and in vegetable physiology. The author has wisely limited himself to some definite sections of the work, and the present volume deals especially with the alkaloids, the glucosides, and the bitter principles. In dealing with the literature of these, he has first set forth the members of these groups which have been chemically examined, taking them in the order of the botanical name of the plant which yields them. In the case of each he gives an account of its botanical source, the workers who have investigated it, and the chief chemical and physical peculiarities it presents. Where, as in so many cases, one plant yields more than one of such principles, all that have been prepared from it are described successively. A summary of the more striking features of each, put in tabular form to admit of ready reference and comparison, forms the second part of the work, while a rearrangement of them, grouped according to their behaviour with various chemical reagents, constitutes Part iii. An idea of the completeness and care with which the book has been compiled may be obtained from the fact that nearly 600 of these vegetable bodies have been described, while the references to contemporary literature embrace the work of the first half of 1893.
Dictionary of the Active Principles of Plants.
By C. E. Sohn. (London: Baillière, Tindall and Cox, 1894.)
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The Active Principles of Plants. Nature 49, 385 (1894). https://doi.org/10.1038/049385a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/049385a0