310 MR C. G. WILLIAMS ON THE VOLATILE BASES 
experiments made by Hormann, that they had been ascertained, by crucial ex- 
periments upon perfectly pure substances, to be the same. In the meantime, 
chinoline is found to be produced from other bodies, among which may be men- 
tioned thialdine and trigenic acid. 
But if we examine the published analyses of chinoline, great discrepancies 
appear, so much so, that GrrHarp? places two formule by the side of the analy- 
tical results, namely, C,, H, N and C,, H, N. On looking at the experimental 
as compared with the theoretical results, it appears that the analyses, if we except 
Hormann’s, which were made upon the base from coal naphtha, agree with neither 
view. Bromets, in a paper on chinoline, published about ten years since,* gave a 
formula which is not admissible, and his numbers, recalculated according to the 
new atomic weight of carbon, do not agree with either of the formule given by 
GERHARDT, the carbon being two per cent. too low. The analysis of the bases 
themselves in the present case, is by no means a satisfactory method of establish- 
ing their constitution, for when entirely freed from other substances, they are ex- 
tremely incombustible ; and when it is considered that the two formulze only cause 
a difference of -2 of a per cent. of carbon, it will be seen that the platinum salts 
afford a far better means of distinguishing them, the addition of C,H, causing a 
rise of two per cent. in the carbon. But even this method could not afford a 
result. where a mixture of substances was present, unless the salt had been frac- 
tionally crystallized, which does not appear to have been done by either of the 
chemists who have worked on chinoline; Bromeis obtaining far too much carbon 
for the 18, and as much too little for the 20 C base; the same remark applying, 
though less strongly, to the results of GERHARDT, whose numbers approach, with 
regard to the carbon, nearer to the formula C,, H, N, than C,, H, N, although he 
obtained greatly too much hydrogen for either. 
Before I had seen the discordant analyses in the Traité de Chimie Organique of 
the last-named chemist, I had suspected, upon theoretical grounds, that chinoline 
was not a homogeneous substance. In the first place, it appeared unlikely that 
in an operation with so powerful a reagent as caustic potash, acting at an elevated 
, temperature upon so complex an organic molecule as the base alluded to, that 
only one substance, and that of so high an atomic weight as chinoline, would be 
found. I had ascertained, by a great number of experiments on nitrogenized 
substances, both animal and vegetable, that in no case could they be distilled, either 
alone or with alkalies, without formation of the pyrrol of Runexr, and on trying 
the same experiment with cinchonine, a similar result presented itself; and this 
alone was a strong evidence of the truth of the supposition alluded to. But the 
chief reason which led me to doubt the homogeneity of chinoline was, that I was 
unable to obtain it with a constant boiling point. I will not lay stress upon an 
* Ligzia’s Annalen, Bd, 52, p. 130. 
