branches of science during the past month. The first meeting, which was held on the 9th of June, was so great a success that the room in which it took place proved too small, and the Abbé was obliged to petition the Societé d'Encouragement for the use of their large hall in the Rue Bonaparte for the July meeting. Several new scientific inventions were shown. One of the most interesting was the stethoscope exhibited by Koenig, which consists of a sort of box containing an artificial tympanum of indiarubber. The apparatus is laid on the chest of the patient, and the sounds of the heart and lungs are listened to through five or six india rubber tubes provided with earpieces. Thus, in the case of hospital demonstration, the patient is freed from the inconvenience of having half-adozen hard stethoscopes pushed into his chest, and the students around hear the sounds produced at their ease. Rumkorff has deservedly been presented with the Napoleon III. prize of 50,000 francs for the induction apparatus that bears his name. The King of Hanover has also sent him a large gold medal. The Museum of Natural History has received several specimens of the meteorite that passed over this country on May 14. Had this happened in England, the specimens would have been visible to the public only about ten years afterwards. The sericiculturists, having tried almost every possible remedy for the numerous ills that silkworm flesh is heir to, have now taken to electrifying their interesting patients, with, it is said, excellent effect. The idea has originated with M. Sauvageon, and has been tried at Valence. The Association for the Advancement of Astronomy and Meteorology, founded by M. Lavoisier, is making great way. At the last meeting, held at the Observatoire, a new reflecting telescope with a speculum 0.80 metres in diameter was shown, and the process of silvering explained. The foundation of such societies will do much to render science really popular in Paris. The popular ignorance of scientific subjects amongst even highly educated Parisians is most singular. It is true they have no Royal Institution, or even Polytechnic, such as we have, but science of a very high kind enters into the educational courses carried on in French schools to a much greater extent than in ours. Amongst the papers recently read before the Societé Stanislas, at Nancy, was one by MM. Giles and Durant, on the utilisation of the rags of mixed fabrics, that is, of rags whose woof is cotton and the weft woollen, or vice versa. It will be remembered that the general system pursued in England is to rot out the cotton by a weak acid or alkali, which leaves the wool intact. In such cases the cotton was lost, and a few years since Mr. F. O. Ward took out a patent for carbonising the wool by means of super-heated steam, which converted it into a valuable manure, leaving the cotton for paper-making. MM. Giles and Durant effect this by dissolving out the wool with the solution of an alkaline sulphide, the dissolved wool being available for the manufacture of prussiates. The authors of the paper were rewarded with the "Prix Ronfils." Amongst the other papers was one on a new green pigment of great beauty, which consists of manganate of barium. The proceedings of the Atlantic Telegraph Company are looked upon over here with great interest. They will have a formidable rival in the Russo-American line, which, with the exception of about forty miles, will be a land line. Mr. Collins, an American, has lately obtained from the British and Russian Governments the right of passage through their territories for thirty-six years. Europe is already in momentary communication with Irkutzk, in Siberia. A line will consequently be laid from Irkutzk to the mouth of the Amour, thence along the coast of Asiatic Russia to over Behring's Straits, which is only about forty miles across, and so on through British North America and British Columbia to California, where the American network will be joined. An American Company has already been formed to supply the capital necessary for carrying out the work. M. Sauerwein has lately analysed one of the thousandand-one anti-incrustation boiler compositions - impositions if you like to call them so-which are sold to ignorant manufacturers at fancy prices. It consists mainly of chloride of barium mixed with 15 per cent. of bone-black, possibly that which remains after the manufacture of sugar. It acts by precipitating sulphate of barium in an insoluble form. Considering the cheapness and efficacy of soda-ash for the purpose, it seems singular that manufacturers should run after so many quack compositions of all the colours of the rainbow. Messrs. Cornelius and Baker, of the Franklin Institute, have recently devised a modification of the ordinary electrophorus for lighting gas. It consists of a spherical cup of brass lined with sheepskin and silk, into which drops a corresponding hemisphere of hard india-rubber. The brass cup communicates with a wire near the jet. To light the gas the hard rubber hemisphere is raised by means of a little handle, and the spark passes, lighting the gas in its passage. They have also devised a portable electrophorus of tubular construction. It consists of two brass tubes closed at each end, united together by a ring of hard rubber covered internally with a silk padding. Inside the tubes is a cylinder of hard rubber which passes freely down the tubes when they are reversed. The apparatus is grasped by the non-conducting ring and held upright, the hard rubber cylinder, of course, being at the lower end. Reversal causes it to pass to the other end, charging the brass tube in its passage. = 56 Ro 104 W = = = = 8 × 3; S 8 x 7; Y = = = 32 64 = 8 x 4; Ca 8 x 8; Br 8 x 12; Di = 96 = 8 × 12; Ru = 16 = 8x2; = 40 = 8×5; = 80 = 8 × 10; = 104 8×13; 8 x 13; Cd 112 = 8 x 14; U 120 = 8 x 15; 1848 x 23; Hg: 200 = 8×25; and others come very near. It is worthy of comment that elements having the atomic weights 728x9; 1448 × 18; 1528 × 19; 160 = 2168 x 27; 224 = 8 x 28; and 232 8 x 29 are wanting, 8 x 20; 168 = 8 x 21; 1768 x 22; 192 = 8 x 24; but future discovery may fill these vacancies. Hoping you will excuse this intrusion on your time, I am, &c. STUDIOSUS. June 18, 1864. 12 Miscellaneous-Answers to Correspondents. A Sad Case. To the Editor of the CHEMICAL NEWS. SIR,-Before softening of the brain, which has already set in with uncontrollable vigour, renders me incapable of thinking or writing, permit me to ask your aid in rescuing at least some of my fellow creatures from the unfortunate fate that is about to befall me. Aerial Rings. CHEMICAL NEWS, To the Editor of the CHEMICAL NEWS. SIR,-The interesting experiments of Mr. Tomlinson, referred to in your last number, having drawn attention to the above phenomena, I may be permitted to quote some extracts from my laboratory notebooks, bearing on the subject. Firstly as to the explosion of gunpowder. We often observe partial and indistinct wreaths on the discharge of heavy ordnance, but on one occasion I saw a strikingly perfect example. Whilst in Paris, in 1855, I was standing near the guns on the Esplanade des Invalides during the firing of a royal salute. The air was quite still, and the entire smoke from one piece burst into a dense oval ring which rose slowly and unbroken for twenty or thirty yards until it melted away. It gradually expanded in diameter, with a marked, though not extremely rapid, rotatory motion. The lively spectators were loud in their exclamations as to its beauty and appropriateness to the occasion, presenting as it did the appearance of a wreath or coronal. I was brought up under the old system of chemical notation, and believed that water was HO for many years, but having attended a certain lecture at the Royal Institution and another at the Chemical Society, advocating the claims of that interesting liquid to the style and title of H2, I was so far struck by the logical correctness of the views held by the lecturers that I forthwith vowed to inquire into the subject, and set the doubts raised in my mind at rest, one way or the other. The result of reading every article in all the leading scientific journals of Europe and America has been my entire conversion to the new faith, but, I am sorry to say, at the expense of my reason. This lamentable result of my search after truth has not been brought about by any difficulty in grappling with the arguments adduced, but simply because scientific Again, when briskly boiling a portion of a soil with writers will not adopt one uniform system in formulating dilute nitro-hydrochloric acid in a glass flask, I have compounds. The confusion resulting is something chaotic. occasionally seen the same effect well produced. In such Talk about Mr. Babbage being driven mad by organ cases the liquid is apt to boil in starts, and sometimes for grinders! Let him only try to read and understand half-a-hours together, almost every burst of acid steam will form dozen consecutive articles on organic chemistry in any itself into an expanding and rapidly rotating ring, as current scientific periodical. Or, to go no further, perfect as those from the deflagration of phosphuretted look at water. One writer formulates water HO, another hydrogen, only not so large or opaque. The flask I emH2O, another H2, a fourth HO; in one page we find ployed held about three pints; the neck was long and the slaked lime appearing as CaO.HO in the next CaO.HO, a mouth about five-eighths of an inch in diameter. few lines further on CaHO, then CaHO, then aH2O2, then CaH2O2, until the brain first becomes confused, then swims, and finally softens. I don't think the blame in this case attaches so much to the editors of these journals as to the authors of the papers, who, from thoughtlessness, imagine that their readers will estimate the symbols they use at the same value that they do themselves. I appeal, therefore, most earnestly to scientific writers to allow their formulæ to be printed in such a manner as to be intelligible to every one. At one time this was accomplished by the double equivalents being indicated by a crossed letter-e.g., = 12, but this custom gradually gave way, and now no warning whatever is given that the C's, O's, &c., in particular papers, are doubled. Watts, in his magnificent 'Dictionary of Chemistry," uses ordinary Roman capitals for the new formulæ, and italics for the old; but now that a third system has sprung up, in which the equivalents of calcium, iron, lead, &c., are doubled, this method will no longer serve. Why should not writers and editors agree, at any rate for the present, to use a thickened letter for the doubled equivalent; this would do away with all confusion, and possibly restore my unfortunate brain to its normal hardness. I give an example: Ca O HO Hydrate of lime. Old system. = as calcium. Gerhardt's system. Latest system, adopted by Kopp, Williamson, Odling, &c. The idea of the heavy equivalent would thus be at once indicated by the heavy appearance of the symbol. My keeper is coming, so I must close my letter.—I am, &c. AN INMATE OF HANWELL. P.S.-My keeper posts this for me. I bribed him by giving him 6d. to regale himself with a glass of brandy and or whatever it is. H [Our correspondent has reason: it would relieve editors of many anxieties if chemists could only agree upon the use of formulæ. Could not an international congress settle the question ?-ED. C, N.] Lastly, as an example of movements, somewhat similar in appearance, I may mention that on fusing a silicate with carbonate of soda in a large platinum crucible at an intense red heat, dark, sharply-defined circular lines are produced on the surface of the liquid, moving spirally inward from the edge to a central point like the figures we see in chromatrope slides. On removing the blow pipe flame this effect continues for some time, only reversed, the revolving lines opening out from the centre to the circumference where the cooling takes place most quickly. I am, &c. FREDERICK W. GRIFFIN, Ph.D. Bristol School of Chemistry, June 20. MISCELLANEOUS.. Danger in the Electric Light!—It will scarcely be believed that Mr. W. de la Rue was obliged to insure Willis's Rooms for 20,000l. before the electric light could be exhibited at his soirée, the office in which the premises that the company would not hold themselves liable for any were already insured having given the proprietors notice damage by fire while the electrical apparatus remained in the building. The ignorance which stimulated this proceeding on the part of the company is something so extraordinary, that, out of charity to other offices, the name should be published. We may mention here that some offices have recently refused to insure buildings in which an apparatus was used for naphthalising gas. ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS. J. A. M.-We do not think it can be done in any way. D. L. J. F.-A common spirit lamp fed with wood spirit will answer every ordinary purpose. C. H. B., Lancashire.-Chemists have long ceased to hang their theories on pegs, and use brackets instead. T. N.-The fixed oil is decomposed by heat. Distillation is effected at a temperature of about 600 F. Stearine and olein may be obtained by saponifying tallow with lime and then decomposing the soap with sulphuric acid. The two fats must then be separated by pressure. Received.-Mr. Ellis.-Next week. We shall be glad to hear further from our correspondent. NEWS SCIENTIFIC AND ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY. Researches on Oxygen, by Dr. G. MEISSNER. (Continued from page 3.) the apparatus (mentioned at page 3) used by the author for completely drying the air, as well as the ozonising tube and the flasks in which he experimented with the ozonised air. The air from the gasometer first entered the tube a, filled with chloride of calcium, and then passed through the flask e, which contained English oil of vitriol. By noticing the bubbles as they passed through this flask the rapidity of the current could be seen, and regulated accordingly. From the flask the air passed through the tubes b, b, b, filled with fragments of glass drenched with sulphuric acid; and, finally, before reaching the ozonising tube, through the bent tube c, which FIG. 1. THE following cuts were intended to accompany the abstract in our last number. Figure 1 will be easily understood as showing the arrangement of the tubes (described at page 2) for electrizing the surrounding air, and needs no further description. Figure 2 represents contained pieces of marble to retain any sulphuric acid. | The exit end of the ozonising tube is seen to be bent up and pass through a cork into a larger tube, f, where it is surrounded with mercury. A small bell glass or a bent neck of a retort, g, dips into the mercury and conducts the ozone to the flasks for experiment. We may now continue our account of the author's results. The cloud or smoke which forms as the ozonised air passes through water, remains on the surface of the liquid, and when the vessel is full and the air of the laboratory is still, may be poured out like carbonic acid. If poured through a tube to the bottom of a dry glass vessel it displaces the air, and the vessel may be filled with the cloud. When a vessel so filled is closed and set aside the mist gradually becomes less and in opaque, the course of thirty or forty-five minutes quite disappears, VOL. X. No. 240.-JULY 9, 1864. leaving the air quite transparent. Water, however, is slowly deposited on the sides of the vessel in small drops or dew, which aggregates and flows to the bottom. When the mist has once disappeared it is impossible to reproduce it with more water, and the air which remains has only the properties of the ordinary atmospheric mixture. The atmizone, therefore, has changed into ordinary oxygen. The water may be perfectly pure, or it may contain substances carried along by the cloud, as will be explained later. These results prove that atmizone has the property of attracting moisture and giving it the characters of a cloud or mist, and then of depositing it again in the form of droplets or dew, while it is itself changed into ordinary oxygen. (To be continued.) 14 On a Colloid Acid; a Normal Constituent of Human Urine. {CHEMICAL NEWS, On a Colloid Acid; a Normal Constituent of Human Urine, by WILLIAM MARCET, M.D., F.R.S.* THE present communication describes the mode of extraction and the properties of an acid of a colloid nature which is always present in healthy human urine, and appears destined to become of great importance in physiological chemistry. July 9, 1864. salts, an acid and a neutral salt. We shall adopt the 2 acid. The fact of there existing two different compounds of the acid explains many chemical phenomena exhibited by this substance and its salts. The neutral salts of the acid are all soluble. water and containing two equivalents of acid, and one which is soluble in water, and evidently containing one equivalent of acid. It forms two lead salts, one which is insoluble in of the mineral acid. The whole of the colloid acid is With the view of separating this acid from the urinary secretion, the fluid is mixed with animal charcoal, concentrated, filtered, and the filtrate, after precipitation with baryta-water, is dialysed for about twenty-four The insoluble compound is obtained by adding basic hours. The dialysed liquid, after subsequent filtration. and concentration, is mixed with basic acetate of lead, acetate of lead to an aqueous solution of the acid or of which precipitates the colloid acid as an insoluble lead- its neutral salts. An excess of the basic acetate redissalt, along with a little hydrochloric acid and other im-solves the precipitate, which reappears on the addition purities. The precipitate should be thoroughly washed, of dilute nitric acid, to be finally redissolved in an excess decomposed with sulphuretted hydrogen, and again treated with animal charcoal. When the acid is re- not, however, precipitated by basic acetate of lead, prinquired in a pure state, the hydrochloric acid present is cipally on account of the formation of a certain quanremoved with carbonate of silver, the excess of the silver tity of neutral acetate of lead, which I found to have precipitated with sulphuretted hydrogen, and after boil- the property of dissolving the insoluble colloid lead salt. ing to evolve this last substance, basic acetate of lead is On boiling a mixture of the insoluble lead compound again added. The lead-salt perfectly washed may be with neutral acetate of lead, acetic acid was given off, considered pure, and the pure acid can be obtained from a confirmatory proof of the insoluble lead compound it by decomposition with sulphuretted hydrogen. being an acid salt. In this case one equivalent of the colloid acid combines with one equivalent of oxide of lead of the neutral acetate, two equivalents of the neutral lead salt of the colloid acid being thus formed. The acid is very slow to decompose when exposed to the air. It may be considered to undergo no loss or decomposition by being boiled, as shown by direct experiment. After concentration by heat, its colour darkens, and it becomes syrupy, possessing a sharp acid taste, with a slight acrid and astringent after-taste; the taste is perceptible in the solution when very dilute: no crystals of the acid could be obtained in the syrup. Dried at a temperature under 212° F., the acid has the appearance of a transparent varnish; it is very hygroscopic, and dissolves readily in water, though not apparently in alcohol, sp. gr. 820, or in ether. When burnt, the colloid acid chars, emitting a pungent and irritating smell, and after complete combustion, nothing but the minutest trace of inorganic residue remains. Although strictly a colloid, this acid in the free state passes through a dialyser, but not so readily as a crystalloid. When under the form of a compound its property of dialysing appears much diminished. I could not find that it exerted any action on polarised light.† The acid was found to consist only of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. I have not yet succeeded in establishing its ultimate quantitative composition, but it appears to be very poor in hydrogen and rich in carbon. The atomic weight of the substance was found by the analysis of its insoluble lead-salt, and of its baryta-salt. I determined the lead in the lead compounds from six different samples of urine; the average on 100 parts was 337 of acid. The analysis of the baryta compound yielded on 100 parts 27.8 of acid. Corresponding to the atomic weights for the lead compound {Oxide of lead Acid. for the baryta compound SBaryta 111'5 168.2 76.5 • 29'5 106'0 PbO,2(Acid)+PbO,C,H2O2=2(PbO, Acid) + C,H,O,. This shows that it is not possible to estimate with accuracy the amount of the acid in urine by means of basic acetate of lead. When the acid is boiled with an excess of hydrated oxide of lead, an insoluble compound is formed. If the acid be in excess, a compound soluble in hot water, but precipitating on cooling, is obtained. I have not yet determined the composition of these two lead salts. The baryta and lime salts are easily prepared from the carbonates. They contain one equivalent of the acid, are soluble in water, and yield precipitates with basic acetate of lead, nitrate of silver, and protonitrate of mercury and tannic acid; the more concentrated the solution the more abundant the precipitates. A very slight precipitate occurs by adding neutral acetate of lead to salts of the acid. Other reagents fail to yield precipitates. The acid dissolves silver from the carbonate, but I could not neutralise it perfectly by such means. The lime salt of the acid cannot be entirely decomposed by boiling it with carbonate of silver. When the acid is boiled with black oxide of copper, copper is readily dissolved. I endeavoured to determine approximately the quantity of the colloid in a given bulk of the urinary secretion, and extracted from 8 litres 446 grammes of this substance, which, however, must fall short considerably of the real amount of the acid present. It may be considered as existing in all probability in the blood, where there is little doubt that it acts an important part in the phenomena of the secretion of gastric juice, by displacing the hydrochloric acid from chloride of sodium combining with the sodium. The soda salt would remain in the blood, being a colloid com It is therefore very obvious that the acid forms two pound, while the free hydrochloric acid would find its * Read before the Royal Society, June 16, 1864. This acid does not precipitate egg-albumen. It precipitates caseine, but an excess does not appear to redissolve the precipitate as in the case of acetic acid. way into the stomach. An experiment I performed in connexion with this subject bears out the present view. The formation of the colloid acid appears to result from some transformation of the colloid, a non-nitro genous constituent of the liver known as the glucogenic substance. When better acquainted with the chemical composition and physiological relations of the colloid acid of urine I shall be able to give it an appropriate name. few other mineral salts. The composition of bones has been examined by many eminent chemists, but the most complete researches are those, published in 1855, by M. Fremy, who examined bones, not only from various classes of vertebrated animals, but also from different parts of the same animal; and to enable you to appreciate some of his conclusions, allow me to draw your attention Remarks on the Distillation of Substances of Different to the following table :-* SOME experiments which have been recently published M. Berthelot distilled 92 parts of alcohol and 8 of water, and found that the distillate at the beginning, middle, and end of the operation contained equal quantities of water and of alcohol. He distilled also a mixture containing a large quantity of sulphide of carbon and a small quantity of alcohol, and found that the least volatile body, the alcohol, passed over with the first portions of the distillate, so that towards the end of the operation the retort contained sulphide of carbon almost pure. Femur-Foetus " Composition of Bones. Mineral Phosphate Phosphate Carbonate Name of Bone. 6 months 63.0 616 60'1 64.2 " Woman 80 " 60.8 " Lion (young) 647 60'0 70'0 62.9 10'6 Sperm Whale Stag's horn To these facts, which tend to cast the greatest doubt on all the results obtained by the laborious process of fractional distillation, I now add the following:When a mixture containing the chlorides of ethy-Scales of the Carp .. lamine, diethylamine, and triethylamine is distilled with caustic alkali, we should, according to received ideas, expect to find the ethylamine, which is a gas at ordinary temperatures, distil over first. Triethylamine, which is at ordinary temperatures and pressures a liquid, separates as such when a strong solution of its chloride is treated with caustic alkali, and floating on the surface, as I have before pointed out, we would naturally expect to find it principally in the later stages of the distillation. The contrary, however, is the case when the less substituted ammonias predominate in quantity. Almost the whole of the triethylamine passes over in the first portions of the distillate, and subsequent ones, though rich in ethylamine and diethylamine, scarcely contain a trace of triethylamine.-American Journal of Science, vol. xxxvii. p. 377. PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. CANTOR LECTURES. 3412 The first conclusion drawn by M. Fremy from these researches is, that he found a larger proportion of mineral matter than is generally admitted by chemists. Secondly, that there is no material difference in the composition of various bones taken from different parts of man, or of any one animal, but that age had a very marked influence on composition. Thus, in the bones of infants there is more in old age there is more mineral and less animal matter animal and less mineral matter than in the adult, whilst than in the middle-aged man. The mineral substance which chiefly increases in old age is carbonate of lime. Lastly, he could find no marked difference between the bones of man, the ox, calf, elephant, and whale; whilst in the bones of carnivorous animals and those of birds there is a slight increase in the amount of mineral matter. Allow me now to call your attention to a most interesting query. I hold in one hand the mineral matter only of a bone, which you can see retains perfectly its original form, and in the other hand I have the animal matter only of a similar bone, which also retains the form in which it previously existed, but is flexible instead of rigid. The question, therefore, arises, whether the strength and hardness of bones proceed from these two kinds of matter "On Chemistry Applied to the Arts." By Dr. F. CRACE being combined together, or are their respective molecules CALVERT, F.R.S., F.C.S. BONES.-Composition of raw and boiled bones. The manufacture of superphosphate of lime. Application to agriculture. Bone-black or char, and their use in sugar refining. Phosphorus, its properties, extraction, and employment in manufacture of matches. Horn and ivory, their composition and applications. LECTURE I. I SHALL not take up your time by making many preliminary remarks, but merely state that though the heads of the subject on which I intend to speak are not inviting ones, still we shall find as we progress that the study of the various matters which I shall bring before you is full of interest and instruction. Further, it would be difficult to name subjects which better illustrate the ability of man to turn to profitable account the various materials placed in his hands, or to mention substances which have received more complete and skilful applications than those we shall treat of this evening. BONES.-The composition of "green bones," or bones in their natural state, may be considered under two general heads, viz. :-the animal matters, consisting of a substance called osséine and a few blood-vessels, and the mineral matters, chiefly represented by phosphate of lime and a merely juxtaposed? The answer is, the latter; for, as you see by this specimen, the mineral matter has been entirely removed without deforming the animal texture. Further, in the foetus it is found that the bones contain nearly the same proportions of animal and mineral matters as those of the adult. Also, it has been observed by M. Flourens and other eminent physiologists, that the wear and tear of bones during life is repaired by the formation of new bone on the exterior surface of the bone, while the old substance is removed through the interior duct, and that the composition of the new layer is the same as that of the original bone. Let us now proceed to examine the chemical properties of the various substances composing bones, and and manufactures. The general composition of bones may some of the various applications which they receive in arts be considered to be as follows: |