548 Royal Society. 



2. A line being given, let the line which makes with an 

 axis of coordinates the supplement of the angle made by the 

 first be called the supplemental line of the first. Take an 

 ellipse and hyperbola with the same major, and any minor, 

 axis; draw a tangent to either, and from the focus of the other 

 draw the supplemental line of the perpendicular to that tan- 

 gent. The locus of the intersection of this supplemental line 

 with the tangent is the equilateral hyperbola which has the 

 same mnjor axis as the given ellipse or hyperbola, to which- 

 ever of the two the tangent was drawn. 



Thus you may see that I have not, in this instance at least, 

 favoured the ellipse at the expense of the hyperbola, without 

 a corresponding reparation to the hyperbola at the expense of 

 the ellipse. Should any similar reflections be cast on me in fu- 

 ture, I shall take some opportunity of answering them, before 

 they have run for 2000 years. 



I am, Gentlemen, yours to command, 

 The General Equation of the Second Degree. 



Dec. 21, 1848. 



LXXVIII. Proceedings of Learned Societies. 



ROYAL SOCIETY. 

 [Continued from p. 158.] 



Nov. 23, "f\N the Chemical Nature of Wax."— Part III. " On 

 1848. ^-J Myricine." By B. C. Brodie, Esq. Communicated 

 by Sir B. C. Brodie, Bart., F.R.S. 



This paper is the last of three papers on the chemical nature of 

 wax, and contains the investigation of that portion of bees- wax 

 which is soluble only with difficulty in boiling alcohol. This body 

 could never be rightly investigated before the discovery of the true 

 nature of the other constituent of the wax, namely, the cerotic acid, 

 for the absence of which no test was known, and the products of the 

 decomposition of which would materially interfere with any experi- 

 ments on the nature of the myricine. When the cerotic acid has been 

 absolutely removed by repeated boiling of the wax with alcohol, a sub- 

 stance remains, which is saponifiable, but with difficulty. From the 

 products of saponification the author isolated palmitic acid, C 32 H 32 4 , 

 and a new wax-alcohol, analogous to, but yet different from cerotine, 

 described in a former paper. This alcohol, melissine, has the formula 

 C 60 H 62 O 4 . By oxidation of this substance by means of lime and 

 potash, the acid C 60 H 60 O , melissic acid, was obtained ; and by the 

 action of chlorine, a body analogous to chloral, a substance, that is, 

 of the aldehyde series, but with a substitution of between fourteen 

 and fifteen equivalents of chlorine for hydrogen. In its conversion 

 into this substance the alcohol loses two equivalents of hydrogen, 

 without substitution. The author also investigated the products of 



