Nicotine itself, of course, is a volatile alkaloid base of which there is only the merest trace in tobacco.

But with this granted, the simplest alkaloid formulas, those of conine, C{8}H{17}N, and nicotine, C{10}H{14}N{2}, still showed that the amine molecule contained quite complex groups of carbon and hydrogen atoms, and the great majority of the alkaloidsthe non-volatile onescontained groups in which the three elements, carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, all entered.

The artificial alkaloid paraconine, isomeric with the natural conine, will be referred to later.