56 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



VI. 



RESEARCHES ON THE VOLATILE HYDROCARBONS. 



By C. M. Warren. 



Communicated May 12, 1868.* 



HI. — ON THE VOLATILE HYDROCARBONS IN PENNSYLVANIA 



PETROLEUxM. — Part I. 



The results recorded in this paper were obtained previously to 

 the publication of a memoir " On the Influence of -GH 2 on the 

 Boiling-points in Homologous Series of Hydrocarbons," etc., 

 which I had the honor to present to the Academy in 1864. f 

 In that memoir I had occasion, for a special purpose, to intro- 

 duce, among others, the formulae of the hydrocarbons that I had 

 separated from Pennsylvania petroleum, but omitting for the time 

 being the data from which these formulae were deduced, with the 

 intention to follow shortly after with another paper in which these 

 data would be given. Publication was at first delayed for an op- 

 portunity to repeat some of the analyses by means of my process 

 for combustion in oxygen gas,| (which is specially suited to the 

 analysis of volatile substances,) with the view to obtain more ex- 



* The manuscript of this memoir was found among the author's papers 

 after his death. The article had been presented to the Academy by title at a 

 meeting held on May 12, 1868, and appears to have been written out in its pres- 

 ent shape at that time, with the possible exceptions that one or two brief foot- 

 notes may have been added subsequently, and that the style of naming some of 

 the compounds may have been changed. The author's motive for holding back 

 the communication — as indicated by brief marginal notes written in pencil 

 upon his manuscript — seems to have been based on a wish to make one or two 

 new analyses, and to repeat by a process of his invention a few determinations 

 of vapor density, in order that absolute justice might be done to Pelouze and 

 Cahours in his criticism of their work. Broadly considered, the delay appears 

 to have been a case of procrastination pure and simple, for there is evidence 

 that the author had never given up his intention of publishing the paper as it 

 now stands. 



t Memoirs of the American Academy, (N. S) IX. 156. 



f Proceedings of the American Academy, 1864, p. 251. 



