1886.] NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 193 



called ''ammonia-soda" in 1866. Commencing with the modest 

 yield of 179 tons in that year, he increased it in ten years to 

 11,580 tons, and in 1883, about 40 per cent of all the soda made 

 on the continent was produced by the ammonia process. The 

 success of the new process has completely killed the Leblanc 

 method in Belgium, and has caused tlie closing of many works in 

 England. A drawback to the new process is that no hydrochloric 

 acid is produced, yet chloride of lime is always in demand; hence 

 a high autliority, Dr. Lunge, thinks that in the future the two 

 processes will, of necessity, exist side by side." 



(16.) In modern chemical literature by far the greatest 

 amount of space is occupied with researches and discoveries in 

 organic chemistry. To the non-professional reader the peculiarly 

 technical language, abounding in words of unusual length, is not 

 only iucomprehensiI)le, but positively forbidding. A vocabulary 

 which contains such terms as toluyldiplienyltriamidocarbinol 

 acetate and metliylorthomonohydroxybenzoate does not encour- 

 age the casual reader; and when he learns the first-named body 

 is the dye-stuff commonly called magenta, and that the second is 

 the innocent oil of wintergreen. surprise gives way to feelings of 

 despair. When one is gleefully informed that a distinguished 

 foreigner has discovered that orthobrombenzyl bromide treated 

 with sodium yields anthracene, which, heated with nitric acid, 

 yields anthraquinone, and tliat anthraquinonedisulphonic acid 

 fused with potassium hydroxide furnishes dioxyanthraquinone, 

 the lay hearer can hardly be expected to become enthusiastic 

 over the announcement, and yet these operations conducted 

 in the private laboratory of a man of genius have been of 

 direct benefit to mankind, setting free thousands of acres for 

 the production of breadstuffs, and establishing industries em- 

 ploying a multitude of workmen. ]n a word, these abstruse 

 phrases describe the artificial production of alizarine, the valu- 

 able coloring matter of madder. 



The polysyllabic nomenclature now prevailing expresses to the 

 chemical mind the innate structural composition of the body 

 named; of late years the words are formed by joining syllables 

 to an almost indefinite extent, and a distinguished chemist has 

 recently urged the advantages of empiric names in place of the 

 unwieldy system. Whether Dr. Odling^s plea will produce 

 a reaction in favor of empiric names remains to be seen." 



(17.) To enter into details concerning the recent progress of 

 organic chemistry, and to make them intelligible to an audience 

 not composed of well-read professional chemists, is an under- 

 taking of doubtful success; we shall content ourselves chiefly witli 

 generalities. 



That remarkable product of nature, petroleum, continues to 

 ■occupy the studies of chemists at home and abroad. Newly in- 



