Br Anderson on the Properties of PicoUne. 291 



there is essential to all the metamorphoses which are there 

 accomplished, yet all the combinations into which it actually 

 enters, are destined to immediate separation from the living 

 body, — being, in fact, the media by which all living bodies, 

 at all periods of their existence, are continually resolving 

 themselves into the inanimate elements from which they 

 sprung. This principle will be better illustrated, however, 

 by a review of the leading facts lately ascertained as to the 

 formation of the other compounds peculiar to organized bodies, 

 and the excretions of animals. 



On the Constitution and Properties of Picoline, a new Organic 

 Base fr(mi Coal-Tar. By TiiOMAS ANDERSON, M.D., 

 F.R.S.E., Lecturer on Chemistry, Edinburgh. 



(Concluded from p. 156.) 



Combinations of PicoUne. 



Picoline forms a series of compounds which are generally 

 closely analogous to those of aniline, but present in a less 

 marked degree the regularity and facility of crystallization 

 which are so characteristic of the salts of the latter base. It 

 forms, however, with the greater number of acids, salts which 

 can be obtained in a crystalline form. These are all highly 

 soluble in water, and some of them are even deliquescent; 

 they are also for the most part readily soluble in alcohol, even 

 in the cold. They are most readily obtained by evaporating 

 their aqueous solutions at 212°, and not by adding an acid to 

 the etherial solution of the base ; as in the latter case the 

 presence of even a minute proportion of water causes them 

 to precipitate in the form of a semifluid mass. Picoline 

 forms a number of acid salts, in which respect it differs from 

 aniline. Its salts are less readily decomposed in the air 

 than the corresponding aniline compounds, but they do event- 

 ually become brown, although without presenting any of the 

 rose- red colour which the latter salts assume. 



