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THE presence in saliva of a substance giving a red colour with ferric chloride was discovered by Treviranus1. Tiedemann and Gmelin2 proved later that this substance was a sulphocyanate. Since that time it has been found by numerous observers to be a frequent but not constant constituent of human saliva, and an occasional constituent of the saliva of the dog. Moreover its presence has been demonstrated in otber parts of the organism; thus Leared3, Gscheidlen4, and others found it in the urine, Leared in the blood, Nencki5 in the gastric juice, and Muck6 in the conjunctival fluid and nasal secretion. A very clear summary of the work relating to the orig,in of the substance in the organism has been published recently by Willanen7, and only such facts will be mentioned here as have a direct bearing upon the subject-matter of this paper. Gscheidlen found that if saliva were prevented from entering the alimentary canal (as in an animal with salivary fistulae), sulphocyanate, although present in the saliva, disappeared from the blood and urine. This result pointed to the salivary glands as the seat of formation of the substance. Tezner8 investigated the changes in the diastatic activity and in the constituents of saliva under varying conditions and concluded that the formation of sulphocyanate was bound up with the salivary secretion, especially with the production of the enzyme. On the other 1 Biologie, iv. p. 565. 1814. 2 Recherches exp6r. sur la Digestion, i. p. 8. 1827. 3 Proc. Roy. Soc. xviii. p. 16. 1869-70. 4 Pfluiger's Archiv. xiv. p. 401. 1877. 6 Quoted by Willanen, Biochem. Ztschr. I. p. 129. 1906. 6 Miinchen. med. Wochenschr. xxxiv. p. 1168. 1900. 7 Joc. Cit. 8 Archiv. intern. Physiol. ix. p. 153. 1900.