218 Mr. B. C. Brodie's Investigation on the 



and that it was in Professor von Liebig's laboratory that this 

 investigation was begun. 



Various chemists have beforeme undertakenasimilarinquiry. 

 The chemical history of a substance so abundant in nature 

 and so useful to man as wax was always a curious question. 

 Of late it has acquired a peculiar interest from our knowledge 

 derived from repeated experiments, that wax is formed in the 

 organs of the bee, and that in the body of that insect that 

 remarkable change of sugar into wax takes place, the know- 

 ledge of the true conditions of which would, we may hope, 

 throw light upon the formation of fatty bodies, and on the way 

 by which out of vegetable products the continual repair of the 

 animal structure is effected. The first step to such a know- 

 ledge must be the accurate study of the chemical nature of 

 those substances which are thus produced. 



But little progress however has been made in this inquiry. 

 I may sum up in a few words those results already known 

 which, by my own experiments, I am able to confirm as true. 

 It has been ascertained that wax is separable by alcohol into 

 two portions, which have been called cerine and myricine ; 

 that, by the action of potash upon wax, an acid or acids may 

 be obtained, and also an unsaponifiable body, ceraine ; and 

 that by the distillation of wax we obtain volatile oils, solid 

 hydrocarbon, and an acid which has been surmised to be mar- 

 garic acid, from its resemblance to that substance. 



I say that these are the ascertained facts. The high atomic 

 weight of these bodies, and the unavoidable errors of analysis, 

 have rendered it easy to find formulas for them, and to specu- 

 late as to their nature. If, however, the views which, in the 

 following pages, I offer to the Royal Society are correct, their 

 true chemical relations and constitution have been undis- 

 covered. 



It would be useless, and it is by no means my intention, to 

 comment upon all the ideas which other chemists have enter- 

 tained upon this matter. There is however one theory, which 

 has been advanced by certain chemists in France, of which it 

 would be unbecoming in me to take no notice, both because 

 it has a certain apparent amount of fact to support it, and 

 because the originators of it, and others also, believe that they 

 have finally settled the question of the true place which wax 

 should hold in our classification of chemical substances*. M. 

 Lewy has stated that cerine, that portion of the wax which is 

 the more soluble in alcohol, is converted by oxidation by 

 means of lime and potash into stearic acid. The method he 



• Annales de C/rimie, vol. xiii. p. 439 j and Berzelius's Jahresbericht, 

 vol. xxiv. p. 468. 



