410 
sibility pass into the part of the apparatus where the spirit 
is condensed. 
Dr. Apjohn proceeded to observe, that the potato spirit 
oil, as it has been hitherto called, has of late attracted much of 
the attention of chemists. Pelletan, from some rough expe- 
riments upon it with acids, threw out the idea that it was 
more analogous to alcohol than to the volatile oils, and this , 
opinion seems to have been in some measure adopted by 
Dumas. More recently M. Auguste Cahours (Annales de 
Chimie, January, 1839) has revived this opinion, and con- 
cluded it to be one of the groups including alcohol, pyroxilic 
spirit, and acetone. He represents it by the formula 
Cio Hig Op = Cio Hy + 2H 0, which obviously makes it quite 
analogous to alcohol in composition. The carbo-hydrogen 
Cy) Hyp he has insulated, by distilling the oil from anhydrous 
phosphoric acid. He calls it amélene, and finds the specific 
gravity of its vapour to be 4.904, so that an atom of it gives 
but one volume of vapour,—a circumstance in which, as Ca- 
hours observes, it agrees with Dr. Kane’s mesitylene, but 
differs from the carbo-hydrogens C4 Hy and C2 Hy which occur 
in alcohol and pyroxilic spirit. By acting upon potato spirit 
oil, (or, as Cahours calls it, amilic alcohol,) with sulphuric 
acid and chlorine, he obtained products corresponding per- 
fectly with those ‘yielded by ordinary alcohol when similarly 
treated. The amilic ether, or Cio Hip -+ HO, he did not suc- 
ceed in insulating. 
Dr. Apjohn observed, in conclusion, that he had been 
aware, for more than twelve months, of the identity of the 
fluid oil which he had examined with the potato spirit oil of 
the French chemists ; but having engaged in the examina- 
tion of another oil, of the consistence of butter at ordinary 
temperatures, which is well known to exist in corn spirit, it 
was his intention, when he had completed his experiments 
upon it, to give publicity to what he knew of both oils in the 
same paper. In the mean time, however, Liebig and Pelouze 
