IHb, ALUMNI JOURNAL. 



67 



Published under the auspices of the 



Alumni Association of the College of Pharmacy 



OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK, 



115-119 WEST 68th STREET. 



Vol. II. 



March 1, 1895. 



No. 3. 



The Alumni Journal will be published Monthly. 

 Entered at New York Post Office as second-class matter 



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EDITOR, 



HENRY KRAEMER, Ph. G. 



ASSISTANT EDITORS. 



FRED. HOHENTHAL, Ph. G. 

 K. C. MAHEGIN, Ph. G. 



ASSOCIATE EDITORS, 



CHARLES RICE, Ph. D. 



CHARLES F. CHANDLER, Ph. D., M. D , L.L.D., etc. 



ARTHUR H. ELLIOTT, Ph. D., F. C. S. 



HENRY H. RUSBY, M. D. 



VIRGIL COBLENTZ, A. M„ Ph. G., Ph. D. 



NEW ELEMENTS. 



More than a year ago K. J. Bayer re- 

 ported that he had discovered a new 

 element among the bye-products of red 

 (French) Bauxite. The acid of the 

 metal is a yellowish brown invisible 

 body, which dissolves in water to form 

 an intense gold-yellow solution and on 

 neutralization with ammonia the color is 

 changed to olive green. Many of the re- 



actions were interesting. The spectrum 

 of the new body gives characteristic vio- 

 let, blue and green lines and it is sug- 

 gested that Bayer has probably discov- 

 ered one of the missing elements pre- 

 dicted by Mendeleeff in the nitrogen- 

 phosphorous group. The reactions with 

 "reagents it is argued also point 

 to a compound of two metals 

 rather than a new element. 



More recently attention has been called 

 to a constituent of the atmosphere which 

 has long been overlooked. In 1894 Lord 

 Raleigh, in a paper read before the 

 Royal Society "On an Anomaly encount- 

 ered in Determinations of the Density of 

 Nitrogen Gas," showed that nitrogen 

 extracted from chemical compounds is 

 about 0.5 per cent, lighter than "atmos- 

 pheric nitrogen." When the discrep- 

 ancy of weights was first encountered 

 attempts were naturally made to explain it 

 by contamination with well known impur- 

 ities as Hydrogen or as due to the disso- 

 ciation of nitrogen molecules N 2 into de- 

 tached atoms. But careful experiments 

 lasting for months demonstrated that 

 "chemical nitrogen" had a density of 

 2.299 and that "atmospheric nitrogen" 

 possessed a density of 2.310. They then 

 tried the process of diffusion in order to 

 determine if the "atmospheric nitrogen" 

 was pure or a mixture of components of 

 different densities and later they proved 

 that the atmosphere contains a previous- 

 ly unknown gas. 



What adds considerable interest to 

 these experiments is the fact that in 1785 

 Cavendish in a paper on "Experiments 

 on Air" calls attention to the fact that 

 the residue left on the withdrawal of 

 oxygen, water, and carbon dioxide from 

 air is identical with the constituent of 

 nitric acid. He moreover showed that 

 phlogisticated air (nitrogen) as he termed 

 it was not the sole residue after removal 

 of the bodies above named and he had 



