272 On Alcohol or spirituous Liquors. 
By repeatedly exposing this substance in vapour, and the ery- 
Stalline state, to the sunbeams, a deposit of a dew of a greenish 
colour is effected ; so that, though heat does not alter it, light 
produces from its chemical affections a most important change. 
Some of the zode I have now with me in a tule hermetically 
sealed, has been thus transmuted. 
By raising a perpendicular to the iode in the state of vapour; 
and placing this in the sunshine, a green shadow is projected. 
The violet vapour which rises on application of heat cannot 
be regarded as an emanation thrown off from the iode, and 
which dissolves the substance, and holds it suspended therein, 
but rather the zode itself finely dispersed and comminuted ; the 
alteration of the size of the crystalline particles, and the varia- 
tions of the figures of the groups, tend to the latter supposition. 
Query? Is iode the metallic radicle of chlorine ? or of mu- 
riatic gas ? or a substance sui generis, elaborated in the vegetable 
economy ? 
I am, with much respect and many thanks, 
Gentlemen, 
Very obediently yours, 
J. Murray. 
To Messrs. Nicholson and Tilloch. . 
LVI. On Alcohol or Spirituous Liguors, and on the Changes 
which they undergo on being rectified with alkaline, saline, 
earthy, and other Substances; to which is subjoined a simple 
Process for obtaining highly dephlegmated Spirits of Wine 
without Injury to its constituent Principles. By M. Dusur, 
of Rouen*. 
F oR upwards of two centuries, chemists have been proposing 
methods for freeing common spirits from a certain quantity of 
-water, malic acid, and other foreign bodies which they obstinately 
retain, in order to procure pure alcohol, or highly rectified spirits 
of wine. It is now about a hundred years since Boerhaave, 
Cartheuser, Stahl, and other chemists were occupied with this 
object, and since, by means of their improvements, this valuable 
fluid has been obtained freed from the heterogeneous substances 
which alter its properties. Of all the old methods, that of Lemery 
seems the best: it consists in distilling in a vapour-bath spirits 
at 22 degrees in a matrass with a very long neck, surmounted 
by a head, &c. 
' Alcohol thus distilled marks in general from 38 to 40 degrees 
in the common hygrometer, (at the temperature from 5° to 12° 
* Annales de Chimie, tome Ixxxyi. p. 314, 
cent- 
. 
