434 Chronicles of Science. | July, } 
memoir, “On the Preservation of Wines by the Employment of 
Heat.” M. Pasteur, reviving an old suggestion of Appert, pro- 
poses to heat wine for a few minutes to 70 or 80 C. The author 
objects to this, and says it is better to submit the wines for some 
time to a temperature not exceeding 45 C. He seems to admit, 
however, that Appert’s or Pasteur’s plan answers well with the 
more saccharine and alcoholic wines, like ports and sherries, &e. 
Some remarkable results of the exposure of phosphorus to heat 
have been communicated by M. Hittorf to the ‘ Annalen der Physik 
und Chemie.’ Schroetter states that red phosphorus returns to 
the state of ordinary phosphorus at 260° C., but M. Hittorf finds 
that this change does not take place under a temperature of about 
447° C. At a lower temperature red phosphorus may volatilize, 
and its vapour acquire a high tension without ceasing to belong 
to the red modification. The transformation of ordinary into red 
phosphorus may easily be effected by heating m*a closed vessel at a 
temperature above 300° C. 
In vaporizing amorphous phosphorus, it does not melt; in this 
resembling its congener arsenic, which resemblance induced M. 
Hittorf to endeavour to crystallize this variety of phosphorus, which 
he believed would take rhomboidal forms like arsenic ; his experi- 
ments proved him to be right. 
Of the numerous attempts made by M. Hittorf, we will cite only 
that which was successful: it consists in heating red phosphorus 
and lead in a closed vessel, the lead dissolved the phosphorus, and 
then deposited it in a crystallized state. The operation was per- 
formed in a fusible green glass tube, a quarter filled with ordimary 
phosphorus, and the rest with lead ; the tube was first cleared of air 
by means of a current of carbonic acid gas, then exhausted, and 
afterwards sealed. It was now introduced into an iron muffle, and 
the spaces filled with calcined magnesia, pressed round the whole of 
the glass tube. 
After ten hours’ heating, the lead was covered with brilliant 
flakes of metallic-looking phosphorus, the finest appearing red when 
held to the light. 
No polyhedrie form could be recognized in these crystals, but 
the lead retained some. These were isolated by treating by nitric 
acid of 1:1, which has no action on phosphorus, while it readily 
forms nitrate of lead. 
The crystalline powder accumulated at the bottom of the vessel 
was “metallic ” phosphorus, which was then in the form of a mass 
of microscopic rhombohedra, resembling crystals of arsenic. In this 
state phosphorus is a conductor of electricity; at 15°5° C. its 
density is 2°34. 
M. Hittorf classes the new modification of phosphorus in the 
same category with red phosphorus, and gives to the two the generic 
