Section of Chemistry and Electricity, 397 



scale is mineralized it ought to consist almost entirely of some re- 

 placing substance, such as siliceous or calcareous matter, coming in 

 place of the decaying animal matter and of little or no bone earth. 



The author has analysed fossil scales from the three following 

 localities, and the result of the analysis he conceives to show the 

 whole of them to have belonged to fish : 



In the first of these the animal matter appears to have been re- 

 placed by siliceous matter ; in the two others, partly by siliceous 

 matter, and partly by carbonate of lime. 



The author has had no opportunity of examining an undoubted 

 saurian fossil scale. 



On the Composition and Properties of the Salts of Sulpho-Methylic 

 Acid. By Robert J. Kane, M.D., M.R.I.A. 



Professor Kane had been occupied with experiments on pyroxylic 

 spirit, in order to test the truth of Liebig's idea of its nature, and 

 had announced to the Royal Irish Academy the fact of the formation 

 of a peculiar acid, analogous to the sulphovinic, by the action of 

 sulphuric acid, before he received an account of Duraas and Peligot's 

 researches on that substance. The question of its nature having 

 been decided by their analysis, he restricted himself subsequently 

 to the development of the history of the sulpho-methylates, a de- 

 partment of the subject on which the French chemists had but 

 slightly touched. 



The sulpho-methylates are easily prepared. A salt of lead may 

 be procured by mixing pyroxylic spirit with an equal weight of oil 

 of vitriol, and neutralizing by carbonate of lead. It crystallizes in 

 fine long rectangular prisms. A salt of baryta can be obtained in a 

 similar manner with carbonate of baryta. From either of these 

 salts the other sulpho-methylates can be obtained, by double decom- 

 position, by means of a soluble sulphate. 



The sulpho-methylate of potash crystallizes in pearly rhom- 

 boidal plates ; it deliquesces. Heated it gives water, neutral sul- 

 phate of methylene, and sulphurous acid, leaving a carbonaceous 



* The Tilgate scales contained carbon and sulphur instead of bituminous 

 matter. 



