sulphruic acid, when an intense rose-red colour is produced (I.
Schindelmeiser, Pharm. Zentralhalle, 1899, 40, p. 704).
The constitution of nicotine was established by A. Pinner (see papers in the Berichte, 1891 to 1895). With bromine in acetic acid solution at ordinary temperature, nicotine yields a perbromide, C10H10Br2N2O⋅HBr3, which with sulphur dioxide, followed by potash, gives dibromcotinine, C10H10Br2N2O, from which cotinine, C10H12N2O, is obtained by distillation over zinc dust. By heating nicotine with bromine in hydrobromic acid solution for some hours at 100° C., dibromticonine hydrobromide, C10H8N2Br2O2⋅HBr, results. Dibromcotinine on hydrolysis yields oxalic acid, methylamine and β-methyl pyridyl ketone: C10H10Br2N2O + 3H2O + O＝ H2C2O4 + CH3NH2 + C5H4N⋅COCH3 + 2HBr; whilst dibromticonine yields methylamine, malonic acid and nicotinic acid: C10H8Br2N2O + 4H2O＝CH3NH2 + CH2(CO2H)2 + C5H4N⋅CO2H + 2HBr, or if heated with zinc and caustic potash, methyl amine and pyridyl-βγ-dioxybutyric acid. Thus the groupings
, —C⋅C— >N⋅CH2 and —C⋅C⋅C—
exist in the molecule, and the alkaloid is to be represented as α-pyridyl-N-methyl-pyrollidine.
This result has been confirmed by its synthesis by A. Pictet and P. Crépieux (Comptes rendus, 1903, 137, p. 860) and Pictet and Rotschy (Ber., 1904, 37, p. 1225): β-aminopyridine is converted into its mucate, which by dry distillation gives N-β-pyridylpyrrol. By passing the vapour of this compound through a red-hot tube, it yields the isomeric αβ-pyridylpyrrol, the potassium salt of which with methyl iodide gives substance methylated both in the pyridine and pyrrol nuclei. By distillation over lime, the methyl group is removed from the pyridine ring, and the resulting α-pyridyl-N-methylpyrrol gives i-nicotine on reduction. This base is resolved into its active components by d-tartaric acid, l-nicotine-d-tartrate crystallizing out first. The natural (laevo) base is twice as toxic as the dextro. The following formulae are important:—
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| N-β-Pyridylpyrrol, | αβ-pyridylpyrrol, | nicotine. |
Acetyl and benzoyl derivatives of nicotine on hydrolysis do not yield nicotine, but an isomeric, inactive oily liquid (metanicotine). It is a secondary base, and boils at 275°-278° C.
Nicotimine is a colourless liquid which boils at 250°-255° C. Its aqueous solution is alkaline. Nicoteine is a liquid which boils at 267° C. It is separated from the other alkaloids of the group by distilling off the nicotine and nicotimine in steam and then fractionating the residue. It is soluble in water and is very poisonous. Nicotelline crystallizes in needles which melt at 147° C. and is readily soluble in hot water.
NICTHEROY, or Niteroy, a city of Brazil and capital of the state of Rio de Janeiro, on the E. shore of the Bay of Rio de Janeiro, opposite the city of that name. Pop. (1890) 34,269, (1900 estimate) 35,000. A railway connects the city with the interior—the old Cantagallo line, now a part of the Leopoldina system, a branch of which runs north-eastward to Macahé, on the coast, and another northward from Nova Friburgo to a junction with the railway lines of Minas Geraes. Nictheroy is practically a residential suburb of Rio de Janeiro. It occupies, in great part, the low alluvial plain that skirts the shores of the bay and fills the valleys between numerous low wooded hills. The site is shut off from the sea coast by a range of high rugged mountains. The shore line of the bay is broken by large, deeply indented bays (that of Jurujuba being nearly surrounded by wooded hills), shallow curves and sharp promontories. Within these bays are beaches of white sand, called praias, such as the Praia da Icarahy, Praia das Flechas and Praia Grande, upon which face low tile-covered residences surrounded with gardens. The city consists of a number of these partially separated districts—Praia Grande, São Domingos, Icarahy, Jurujuba, Santa Rosa, São Lourenço, Ponta d’Areia and Barreto—all together covering 8 or 9 m. of the shore. An electric street railway connects all the outlying districts with the ferry stations of Praia Grande and São Domingos. The city is characteristically Portuguese in the construction and style of its buildings—low, heavy walls of broken stone and mortar, plastered and coloured outside, with an occasional facing of glazed Lisbon tiles, and covered with red tiles. Among the public buildings are several churches and hospitals (including the Jurujuba yellow-fever hospital and the Barreto isolation hospital), the government palace, a municipal theatre and a large Salesian college situated in the suburbs of Santa Rosa on an eminence overlooking the lower bay. Several large islands fill the upper bay near the eastern shore; some are used as coal deposits for the great steamship companies, and one (Flores) is used as an immigrants' depôt. There is a small, rocky and picturesque island nearer the harbour entrance, which is crowned by a small chapel, dedicated to Nossa Senhora da Boa Viagem. Manufactures include cotton and woollen fabrics, tobacco, spirits, soap and tiles.
The first settlement on the east side of the Bay of Rio de Janeiro dates from 1671, when a chapel was erected at Praia Grande, in the vicinity of an Indian village. The settlement did not become a village until 1819, when it was named Villa Real da Praia Grande. In 1834 the city and municipal district of Rio de Janeiro was separated from the province, and Praia Grande became the capital of the latter in the following year. In 1836 it was raised to the dignity of a city and received the appropriate name of Nictheroy, from the Indian name Nyterōi, “hidden water.” In the naval revolt of 1893–4 the older districts of the city suffered much damage from desultory bombardments, but the insurgents were too few to take possession. Soon afterwards the seat of government was removed to Petropolis, where it remained until 1903, when Nictheroy again became the capital of the state.
NIDIFICATION (from Lat. nidus), the process of making a nest (q.v.). Nidification is with most birds the beginning of the breeding season, but with many it is a labour that is scamped if not shirked. Some of the auk tribe place their single egg on a bare ledge of rock, where its peculiar conical shape is but a precarious safeguard when rocked by the wind or stirred by the thronging crowd of its parents' fellows. The stone-curlew and the goatsucker deposit their eggs without the slightest preparation of the soil on which they rest; yet this is not done at haphazard, for no birds can be more constant in selecting, almost to an inch, the very same spot which year after year they choose for their procreant cradle. In marked contrast to such artless care stand the wonderful structures which others, such as the tailor-bird, the bottle-titmouse or the fantail-warbler, build for the comfort or safety of their young. But every variety of disposition may be found in the class. The apteryx seems to entrust its abnormally big egg to an excavation among the roots of a tree-fern; while a band of female ostriches scrape holes in the desert-sand and therein promiscuously drop their eggs and leave the task of incubation to the male. Some megapodes bury their eggs in sand, leaving them to come to maturity by the mere warmth of the ground, while others raise a huge hotbed of dead leaves wherein they deposit theirs, and the young are hatched without further care on the part of either parent. Some of the grebes and rails seem to avail themselves in a less degree of the heat generated by vegetable decay and, dragging from the bottom or sides of the waters they frequent fragments of aquatic plants, form of them a rude half-floating mass which is piled on some growing water-weed—but these birds do not spurn the duties of maternity.
Many of the gulls, sandpipers and plovers lay their eggs in a shallow pit which they hollow out in the soil, and then as incubation proceeds add thereto a low breastwork of haulm. The ringed plover commonly places its eggs on shingle, which they so much resemble in colour, but when breeding on grassy uplands it paves the nest-hole with small stones. Pigeons mostly make an artless platform of sticks so loosely laid together that their pearly treasures may be perceived from beneath by the inquisitive observer. The magpie, as though self-conscious that its own thieving habits may be imitated by its neighbours, surrounds its nest with a hedge of thorns. Very many birds of almost every group bore holes in some sandy cliff, and at the end of their tunnel deposit their eggs with or without bedding. Such bedding, too, is very various in character; thus, while the sheldduck and the sand-martin supply the softest of materials—the one of down from her own body, the other of feathers collected
