101 
Adipocere consists of a mixture of palmitic and stearic 
acids, with more or less ammonia derived from the decom- 
posing bodies. These two acids remain and are present in 
the bodies, while the glycerine and oleic acids are removed 
during decay. 
Adipocere exhibits the following reactions:—heated to 
100° C., it melts, and by slowly raising the temperature it 
gives out about is its weight of water. With water it be- 
haves like soap. It forms with lime a soap, which on being 
treated with hydrochloric acid, deposits the fatty acids as a 
waxy, lustrous, crystalline mass, soluble in hot alcohol, and 
yielding feathery crystals on cooling. 
Mr. Falke alluded to deposits of adipocere in England and 
America; and among other specimens, exhibited a remarka- 
ble cross section of a thigh, from Potter's Field, New York 
City, in which the whole mass of the limb appeared changed 
into adipocere. 
Pror. HENRY Wurtz read an extended paper ‘On the 
Water Supply of Jersey City and Newark.’* 
This paper contained the results of a careful and laborious 
examination of the waters of the Morris Canal, the Passaic 
River, Lake Hopatcong, the Jersey City Water Works, and 
the Newark Water Works, with several other waters; these 
being investigated from a chemical and sanitary point of 
view, with special reference to the availability of the Morris 
Canal as a source of pure water-supply for thecities of Newark 
and Jersey City. 
The results of the analyses cannot be here reproduced, but 
a comparison of these results developed the interesting fact 
that the water of Lake Hopatcong is one of the purest in 
the world, containing only 1.79 grains total solids per gallon; 
—the waters of Bala Lake, in Wales, and of Loch Katrine, 
Scotland, but slightly exceeding it in purity, (1.63 grains per 
gallon). 
Some remarkable facts were stated relative to the powerful 
* Published in full in the American Chemist for March, 1874. 
