PROCEEDINGS 



OFTHB 



PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF GLASGOW. 



FORTY-SECOND SESSION, 1843-44. 



CONTENTS. 



Pbofessor Thomas Thomson on Coal Gas, 165 



Ma. Spens on the Formation of a Friendly Society for the Professional and Mer- 

 cantile Classes, 177 



Dr. R. D. Thomson on Parietin, a Yellow Colouring Matter, .... 182 



Report of Botanical Section, 192 



Da. Watt on the Laws of Mortality at Different Ages, 193 



1st November, 1843, — The President in the Chair. 



Mr. John Watt was elected a Member of the Society. 



Mr. Gourlie, in the absence of Dr. Balfour, presented the Transac- 

 tions, Laws, and Regulations of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh, 

 on the part of that body. The Secretary was requested to return 

 the thanks of the Society to the Edinburgh Botanical Society for 

 their donation. The Vice-President having taken the Chair, Dr. 

 Thomson read the following paper. 



XLI — On Goal Gas. By Thomas Thomson, M.D., F.R.S., L. & E., 

 M.R.LA., Begins Professor of Chemistry. 



It is well known that the word Gas was first introduced into 

 chemistry by Van Helmont, in his Treatise de Flatihus. Junker, 

 whose Conspectus Chemice Theoretico Practices was published in 1744, 

 conjectures that Van Helmont's word gas was merely the German 

 word Gdschty fermentation in a Latin dress, and this conjecture seems 

 as probable as any. 



Boyle was the first chemist who attempted to make gas artificially, 

 and who showed that thus prepared it possessed the mechanical pro- 

 perties of common air. The gas which he examined was hydrogen, 

 obtained by pouring dilute sulphuric acid on iron filings. 



Hales, in 1726, proved by experiment, that many animal and vege- 

 table substances, when heated sufficiently, give out an air which 



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