230 Investigation on the. Chemical Nature of Wax. 



bees'-wax made in this part of the world, bleached or other- 

 wise, which I have examined*. It occurred to me however 

 that wax made under very different conditions of climate and 

 vegetation to ours might possibly have a different constitution. 

 With this view I procured, through the kindness of a friend 

 who was resident in Ceylon, some bees'-wax from that island. 

 The wax as I received it was white, having in all respects the 

 appearance of English wax, and melting at 63° C. In other 

 points also, as I shall show in another paper, its chemical 

 nature was the same as that of English wax. The cerotic 

 acid however was entirely absent. When extracted in the 

 boiling alcohol a portion of the wax dissolves ; but on the 

 addition of acetate of lead to the alcoholic solution hardly a 

 trace of precipitate is formed. 



Such a variation in the nature of an insect-secretion under 

 different conditions of life is a remarkable fact, which we may 

 place by the side of the curious difference in the nature of the 

 constituents of butter in different years, discovered by Lerch. 

 In his excellent investigation on the nature of the volatile 

 acids of butter, this chemist discovered f that the butyric and 

 caproic acids of one year were in another year replaced by 

 vaccinic acid, an acid from which, by deoxidation, the two 

 former acids might readily be formed. 



Vaccinic acid. Butyric acid. Caproic acid. 



C 20 H 20 7 = C 8 H 8 4 + C 12 Hj 2 4 — O. 



The cerotic acid, C^ H M 4 , although far removed in the 

 series of fatty acids from these volatile acids of butter, yet 

 nevertheless belongs to the same chemical series of bodies, 

 to that series, namely, which contain carbon and hydrogen in 

 equal equivalent proportions, and which, theoretically at least, 

 are capable of being produced by deoxidation from sugar or 

 from starch. 



Any fact is of importance which can throw light upon the 

 law by which these substances are truly convertible, one 

 into the other, and it would be highly interesting to investi- 

 gate, in those waxes where the cerotic acid is not found, by 

 what bodies, if any, it can be replaced. 



13 Albert Road, Regent's Park, 

 February 28th, 1848. 



* I should except a wax made by wild bees in Wiltshire, which I tested 

 with acetate of lead for this acid, but could find none. The quantity of 

 the wax however was so small that I was unable to make many experiments 

 with it. 



f Annalen d. Ch. und Pharm. vol. xlix. p. 230. 



