270 PROCEEDINGS OP THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 



The inferences drawn in the foregoing discussion may be briefly reca- 

 pitulated as follows : It is improbable that the sodic methylate is added 

 to the carbon of the benzol ring only. A quinoid formula (II. or III.) 

 explains the observed facts better than one in which the sodic methylate 

 is added to the nitro group alone (I.), but this latter structure is not 

 definitely excluded. Under these circumstances we think it would be 

 premature to contrive names for these colored bodies, or to give struc- 

 tural formulas in the experimental part of this paper. We hope that the 

 continuation of the work, now in progress in this Laboratory, will 

 definitely settle the constitution of these colored substances. 



Experimental Part. 



Preparation of Picryl Chloride. 



As the method of making picryl chloride used by us in this work was 

 an improvement on that given by Pisani,* we describe it. 25 grams of 

 dry picric acid were mixed with 50 grams of phosplioric pentachloride in 

 a large Erlenmeyer flask provided with an air condenser, and heated on 

 the water bath until the violent reaction had ceased, and the contents 

 had assumed a very dark brown color. When cold, the flask was sur- 

 rounded with ice, and its contents treated with ice water, care being 

 taken to avoid any considerable rise of temperature. The precipitate 

 formed in this way was filtered out, dried, washed with ether, and crys- 

 tallized from a mixture of benzol and alcohol to purify it. The advan- 

 tages in our method are that there is a considerable saving of time, and 

 there is much less danger that the substance will be converted into a 

 tarry decomposition product, as happens in Pisani's method if the heat 

 runs too high in either the preparation or the removal of the phosphoric 

 oxychloride by distillation. 



Action of Sodic Acetacetic Ester with Trinitranisol. 



In our first experiment in this direction we prepared our sodic acet- 

 acetic ester with sodic methylate, and obtained a red precipitate which 

 gave the following result on analysis : — 



0.2438 gram of the substance gave 0.0576 gram of sodic sulphate. 



Calculated for CeH,(N0o)30Cn3Na0CH3. Found. 



Sodium 7.69 7.66 



* Ann. Chem. (Liebig), XCII. 326. 



