OF ARTS AND SCIENCES: MARCH 8, 1864. 



251 



TABLE 11. 



On a Process of Organic Elementary Analysis, by Combus- 

 tion in a Stream of Oxygen Gas. By C. M. Warren. 



The process in general use for ultimate organic analysis had seemed 

 to me so nearly perfect as to leave little room for any very marked 

 improvement. Like all other processes of analysis, however, it has its 

 own peculiar sources of error, inherent in the nature of the substances 

 employed, and in the manipulations to be performed. But these appear 

 to have been reduced to a minimum ; so that, with great care and the 

 necessary skill, there can be no reason to doubt that that process, with 

 the various modifications which have been proposed to meet special 

 cases, is capable of affording as accurate results, in a majority of in- 

 stances, as can, perhaps, be claimed for any other analytical process. 

 Nevertheless, there are instances, and they are doubtless numerous, 

 where so satisfactory a solution of the question which may be under 

 consideration as would be highly desirable, cannot be attained by that 

 process. It was after repeated unsuccessful efforts, in a case which ap- 

 peared to be of this kind, that I was led to conceive the idea of making 

 the combustion in oxygen gas alone ; and to devise the method which 

 I am about to describe. 



Were it not for the danger of explosions in the combustion tube, the 

 occurrence of which would, at least, render its use fruitless of good re- 

 sults, the employment of pure oxygen, as a combustion agent in analysis, 

 would seem, of all substances, the one most naturally suggested. This 

 apparent difficulty is probably the' chief reason it has not long ago been 

 brought into general use ; its employment since the time of Prout, so 



