402 Chronicles of Science. | July, 
a crystalline form, the discoverers have provisionally named it 
Animal Quinoidine. It deserves to be mentioned that the experi- 
ments undertaken in the course of this research showed the extreme 
delicacy of the fluorescence test for quinine itself. The author 
found that a grain of quinine dissolved in one million eight hundred 
parts of water showed the blue fluorescence distinctly in twenty 
grains of the solution. For further information on this very 
interesting matter, we may refer the reader to Dr. Jones’s lecture.* 
M. Berthelot’s continued researches on Acetylene have led him 
to the important discovery that at high temperatures various hydro- 
carbons will combine with each other, and with hydrogen to form 
higher carbides of hydrogen; and have also suggested to him a 
new theory of the origin of petroleum. . Daubrée has speculated 
that the alkaline metals may exist in the free state in the centre of 
the earth. Carbonic acid, M. Berthelot states, 1s everywhere 
infiltrated in the crust of the earth, and may come in contact with 
the alkaline metals at very high temperatures. In this way 
acetylides would be formed. The same acetylides, he states, would 
also be formed by the contact of alkaline metals with earthy 
carbonates below even a dull red heat. By the action of steam the 
alkaline acetylides so produced would set free acetylene, and this 
body being unable to exist under the conditions in which it must 
be placed, we obtain instead the products of its condensation, bodies 
allied to petroleum and bitumen.t ‘This view of the formation of 
the natural carbides of hydrogen, by purely mineral reactions, will 
no doubt attract much attention from chemical geologists. 
While speaking of the carbides of hydrogen, we must not omit 
to mention the discovery by Mr. Schorlemmer of a new series in 
that still unexhausted mime of discovery, coal-tar. These bodies are 
still under investigation, and we shall probably have to refer to them 
on another occasion. 
In analytical and technical chemistry we have observed nothing 
that requires a notice. 
In chemical literature a few useful books have appeared. Mr. 
H. Spencer, B.A., has. published a very useful book, ‘Hlements of 
Qualitative Chemical Analysis,’ which is unfortunately disfigured by 
a large number of errata, not all of which are corrected in the long 
table at the beginning of the work. This is a great fault in a book 
intended for beginners, who will seldom take the trouble to make 
the corrections before they commence to use the book. One very 
useful feature in the work is the explanation of all the reactions by 
equations. It need only be added, that the symbols and equations 
are expressed in the new system of notation, which alone will give 
the work a value in the estimation of many. 
* *Chemical News, April 27, 1866. 
+ ‘Comptes Rendus,’ lxii., p. 949. 
