534 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and yet these operations conducted in the private laboratory of a man 

 of genius have been of direct benefit to mankind, setting free thousands 

 of acres for the production of breadstuff's, and establishing industries 

 employing a multitude of workmen. In a word, these abstruse phrases 

 describe the artificial production of alizarine, the valuable coloring- 

 matter of madder. 



The polysyllabic nomenclature now prevailing expresses to the 

 chemical mind the innate structural composition of the body named ; 

 of late years the words are formed by joining syllables to an almost 

 indefinite extent, and a distinguished chemist has recently urged the 

 advantages of empiric names in place of the unwieldy system. 

 Whether Dr. Odling's plea will produce a reaction in favor of empiric 

 names remains to be seen. 



To enter into details concerning the recent progress of organic 

 chemistry, and to make them intelligible to an audience not composed 

 of well-read professional chemists, is an undertaking of doubtful suc- 

 cess ; we shall content ourselves chiefly with generalities. 



That remarkable product of nature, petroleum, continues to occupy 

 the studies of chemists at home and abroad. Newly invented methods 

 of fractional distillation have disclosed previously unsuspected con- 

 stituents and peculiarities. Lachowitz has found in the petroleum of 

 Galicia several members of the aromatic series ; Mendelejeff has no- 

 ticed abnormal relations between the specific gravity and boiling-points 

 of successive fractions in distilling American petroleum. The various 

 commercial products from crude petroleum, rhigolene, vaseline, paraffin, 

 etc., continually find new and useful applications, their names being 

 household words. 



The industrial and scientific novelties in the important groups of 

 oils and fats, alcohols, and acids, can not be specified. After cane- 

 sugar, glucose is receiving the most attention ; in the United States 

 and Germany are sixty manufactories of the various grades of starch- 

 sugar, the annual home production alone being valued at ten million 

 dollars. Glucose is extensively used as a substitute for cane-sugar in 

 the manufacture of table-syrup, in brewing, in confectionery, in mak- 

 ing artificial honey, and in adulterating cane-sugar, as well as in many 

 minor applications. Recent experiments by Dr. Duggan, of Balti- 

 more, show that glucose is in no way inferior to cane-sugar in health- 

 fulness. Much work has been done on sorghum by Dr. Peter Collier, 

 and the first complete examination of maple-sugar has lately been made 

 by Professor Wiley, of the Department of Agriculture. Lovers of the 

 latter sweet will be pleased to learn that it can be made by adding to 

 a mixture of glucose and cane-sugar a patented extract of hickory- 

 bark which imitates the desired flavor. 



The great demand for high explosives as adjuncts to engineering, 

 mining, and military operations, occasions constant experimentation ; 

 besides the invention of mere empiric mixtures of known substances, 



