( 147 ) 



If all these reactions should take place simultaneously, there could 

 be no question of a constant. And yet, as mentioned above, there 

 were found constants for the two alcohols, even for alcohols diluted 

 with an equal weight of water. The explanation proved to be easy. 

 In opposition to the generally adopted idea, it was shown that the 

 sodium in methylic alcohol diluted with 50 pCl. of water was mostly 

 bound to oxalkyl. The same may also be proved by a quantitative 

 estimation of the natriumnitrophenolate formed , which was pos- 

 sible along the colorimetric way owing to the yellow colour of that 

 salt. The quantities formed of it, proved to be very small and 

 amounted only to a few percent for 50 pCt. and 60 pCt. ethylic 

 alcohol . 



There also came out another peculiarity viz. this, that the addition 

 of water causes the reactionconstant in methylic alcohol to rise from 

 0.0169 to 0.0249, in ethylic alcohol to fall from 0.0261 to 0.0104. 

 For a percentage of ± 12 pCt of water the constant of the two 

 alcohols is the same. It was now highly to be regretted that the 

 constantly decreasing solubility of orlhodinitrobenzene in the diluted 

 alcohols did not allow to continue the experiment down to water. 

 The two curves that may be constructed with the constants and the 

 percentage of water must necessarily meet in one point, the one 

 that would indicate the reactionconstant for aqueous natron, that 

 is in absence of the alcohols. Yet we were able to extend our 

 tests so far that we have shown for the still more diluted alcohols 

 how much nitroanisol and nitrophenetol and how much nitrophenol 

 were formed when boiling dinitrobenzene with natron that contained 

 40, 20 and 10 pCt. of the alcohols. The result of these tests — 

 see below — shows that even in the strongly diluted methylic 

 alcohols the formation of the methoxyl-compound forms the principal 

 reaction, while in ethylic alcohol a considerable quantity of nitro- 

 phenetol is created nevertheless. 



