D. CHEMISTRY AND METALLURGY. 227 



winch these bodies take their name, they can therefore fix 

 directly the elements of water and form monobasic acids; 

 dimethylene carbonyle uniting with water directly and yield- 

 ing propionic acid. Moreover, by virtue of this unsatnration 

 they can unite directly with three atoms of oxygen to form 

 dibasic acids; camphor yielding camphoric acid in this way. 

 Conversely, the removal of water and carbonic dioxide from 

 a single molecnle of a dibasic acid yields a carbonyle; thus 

 differing from the analogous production of ketones, by the 

 fact that in the latter case the removal is from two molecules 

 of a monobasic acid. The author gives evidence to show 

 that camphor belongs to this class of bodies, and says that, 

 had he not hesitated to found a new class of bodies on a 

 single compound, he would have proposed camphor as a car- 

 bonyle long ago. Bulletin de la Societe Chimique de Paris, 

 II., xxiii., 14G, February, 1875. 



ELEMATIN NOT FERRUGINOUS. 



It has been for some time known that the proportion of 

 iron which existed in the coloring matter of the blood, call- 

 ed hseniatin, was very variable, and that by repeated purifi- 

 cation it could be so far reduced in amount that only a 

 trace remained. Hence the opinion has arisen that the iron 

 is not an essential constituent, as is generally supposed. 

 Paquelin and Jolly have examined the question at length, 

 starting from the well-known researches of Chevreul upon 

 this substance, which were to the same purport. The re- 

 sults have shown the correctness of the assumption, they 

 having succeeded in devising a process by which the whole 

 of the iron may be removed and the haematin obtained pure. 

 In brief their method is as follows: Having removed the al- 

 buminates of the blood by basic lead acetate, the corpuscles 

 are dried and powdered, then digested in glacial acetic acid 

 until they are reduced to a gelatinous mass. The coloring 

 matter is then taken up by carbon disulphide or benzene, 

 and the hsematin recovered by careful evaporation of the 

 solvent. The corpuscles may with advantage be macerated 

 in alcohol containing ten per cent, of ammonia previous to 

 the treatment with acetic acid. The purification of the has- 

 matin from the iron is the next step. It is dissolved in ten 

 times its weight of acetic acid, two and a half parts of citric 



