No. 2.] BRITISH ASSOCIATION MEETING. 163 



phorus, it is a pentad, and the vanadates correspond in composition 

 to the phosphates, but differ in the order of stability at ordinary 

 temperatures, the soluble tribasic salts being less stable than the 

 tetrabasic compounds. Sainte Claire Deville, in continuation of his 

 researches on dissociation, has examined the conditions under which 

 vapour of water is decomposed by metallic iron. The iron, main- 

 tained at a constant temperature, but varying in different experi- 

 ments, from 150*^ C. to 1600° C, was exposed to the action of, 

 the vapour of water of known tension. It was found that for a 

 given temperature the iron continued to oxidise till the tension of 

 the hydrogen formed reached an invariable value. In these ex- 

 periments, as Deville remarks, the iron behaves as if it emitted a 

 vapour (hydrogen), obeying the laws of hygometry. An inter- 

 esting set of experiments has been made by Lothian Bell on the 

 power possessed by spongy metallic iron of splitting up carbonic 

 oxide into carbon and carbonic acid, the former being deposited 

 in the iron. A minute quantity of oxide of iron is always formed 

 in this reaction. In organic chemistry, the labours of chemists 

 have been of late birgely directed to a group of hydrocarbons, 

 which were first discovered among the products of the destructive 

 distillation of coal or oil. The central body round which these 

 researches have chiefly turned is benzol, whose discovery will al- 

 ways be associated with the name of Faraday. Baeyer has pre- 

 pared artificially picoline, a base isomeric with aniline, and dis- 

 covered by Anderson in his very able researches on the Pyridine 

 series. Of the two methods described by Baeyer, one is founded 

 on an experiment of Simpson, in which a new base was obtained 

 by heating tribromallyl with an alcoholic solution of ammonia. 

 By pushing further the action of the heat, Baeyer succeeded in 

 expelling the whole of the bromine from Simpson's base, in the 

 form of hydrobromic acid, and in obtaining picoline. The same 

 chemist has also prepared artificially collidine, another base of 

 the Pyridine series. In this list of remarkable synthetical dis- 

 coveries, another of the highest interest has lately been added by 

 Schifi" — the preparation of artificial coniine. He obtained it by 

 the action of ammonia on butyric aldehyde. The artificial base 

 has the same composition as coniine prepared from hemlock. It 

 is a liquid of an amber-yellow colour, having the characteristic 

 odour and nearly all the usual reactions of ordinary coniine. Its 

 physiological properties, so far as they have been examined, agree 

 with those of coniine from hemlock, but the artificial base has 

 not yet been obtained in large quantity, nor perfectly pure. 



