JACKSON AND TORREY. — AN ORGANIC OXIDE. 167 



Properties of Tribromveratrol. — It crystallizes from hot alcohol in 

 long slender slightly branched white needles, which when well developed 

 have blunt, perhaps square ends. It melts at 86°-87°. It is easily solu- 

 ble in benzol, chloroform, acetone, or ethylacetate ; soluble in ligroin ^ 

 somewhat soluble in methyl or ethyl alcohol, or in glacial acetic acid, 

 much more soluble in each of these solvents when hot. The best solvent 

 for it is hot alcohol. Sodic hydrate does not dissolve it, and does not 

 decompose it even when boiling. A warm glacial acetic acid solution 

 of tribromveratrol turns bright red, when strong nitric acid is added to 

 it. If tribromguaiacol is treated in the same way a similar red color is 

 produced, and a bright red substance is deposited on cooling, which we 

 supposed was tribromorthoquinone, but owing to the small yield and the 

 late date at which this work was undertaken we are unable to make any 

 definite statement in regard to it. We hope that the study of this sub- 

 stance will be continued in this Laboratory during the coming year. 



Colored Compounds obtained from Substituted Quinones by the Action of 



Sodic AlcoJiolates. 



The work described in this section was undertaken in the hope of 

 preparing new hemiacetals derived from the substituted quinones, and 

 also of throwing more light on the nature of quiuhydrone and pheno- 

 quinone. It was abandoned before it had reached a satisfactory conclu- 

 sion, because of the appearance of two papers by Astre,* in which he 

 described substances similar to those made by us ; but we give an account 

 of it here, as it has led us to differ from Astre in regard to the consti- 

 tution of these bodies. 



In the paper I on hemiacetals derived from quinones, Grindley and one 

 of us state that the first product of the action of sodic phenylate on 

 chloranil is a green or black substance, which on heating passes rapidly 

 into the red dichlordiphenoxyquinone. As it seemed possible that this 

 might be a diphenylhemiacetal, we spent some time in trying to isolate 

 it; but, although we succeeded in obtaining a dark green substance in 

 the solid state, we were unable to find any method of freeing it from 

 the sodic chloride, which (in addition to dichlordiphenoxyquinone) was 

 always formed by a secondary reaction, since it was very unstable. We 

 next turned our attention to the green compound formed by the action 

 of sodic methylate on chloranil, t as this from its mode of formation and 



* C. R., CXXI. 326, 530. % These Proceedings, XXX. 430. 



t These Proceedings, XXX. 423. 



