298 



Dr Anderson on the Properties of Picoline. 



The facility with which aniline can be obtained by the de- 

 composition of different members of this group, renders it by 

 no means impossible to anticipate the artificial production of 

 picoline also. 



As we can start from benzoic acid, and convert it into ben- 

 zin, benzin into nitrobenzid, and that finally into aniline, by 

 the action of sulphuretted hydrogen, it seems by no means 

 improbable that salicylous acid, the isomeric of benzoic acid, 

 may be made to undergo a similar series of changes, the final 

 result of which would be the formation either of picoline, or 

 of some other compound isomeric with it and aniline. In 

 oder to subject this hypothesis to the test of experiment, I 

 mixed salicylous acid with equal weights of slaked lime and 

 caustic baryta, and distilled in the oil bath, with the view of 

 obtaining a substance which should be isomeric with benzin. 

 The greater part of the salicylous acid, however, passed over 

 unchanged ; but by agitation with solution of potass, there 

 was left undissolved an excessively minute quantity of a solid 

 crystalline substance. Finding this mode of operating unsuc- 

 cessful, I passed salicylous acid over spongy platinum heated 



* Gerhardt has observed (Precis de Chimie Organique, torn, ii., p. 21), that 

 benzoic acid, when fused with hydrate of potass, evolves hydrogen, and gives 

 the potass salt of a new acid. This may possibly be isomeric with salicylic acid. 



