On the Action of the Vegetable Acids on Alcohol. 217 
2d. That the benzoic acid and alcohol formed with the 
muriatic acid a kind of oil heavier than water, which we 
might decompose by potash like acetic ether, and of which 
one of the constituent principles was benzoic acid. 
3d. That we obtained no particular product by treating 
an alcoholic solution of tartarous, citric, or succinic acid, 
either by sulphuric, nitric, or muriatic acid. 
Scheele knew, therefore, that acetic ether and lenzoic 
oil contained, the one acetic acid and the other benzoic 
acid; but he was not acquainted with the other principles 
which enter into them, nor, a forlior?, with the part acted by 
alcohol and the mineral acids in the formation of these two 
kinds of compounds. From this alone we may suppose that, 
if he had inferred from his experiments some consequence re- 
Jative to the formation of these compounds, he would have 
admitted into the acetic ether, and into the benzoic oil, a 
vegetable acid, and, in addition, the mineral acid which he 
employed and some alcohol, or rather merely a new body 
proceeding from the alcohol decomposed by this mineral 
acid; or perhaps this new body and this mineral acid itself, 
This triple hypothesis shows how incomplete the experi- 
ments were upon which it was founded. It was therefore 
necessary to resume the subject, and I have done this with 
the more care because it is immediately connected with my 
own experiments on the ethers, and because the results to 
which they led me are very singular, and may even become 
important. 
My operations, like those of Scheele, are divided into 
two parts: 7. ¢. ] examined in succession the action of the 
pure vegetable acids, and of the vegetable acids mixed with 
the mineral acids, on highly rectified alcohol. 
Almost all the vegetable acids are dissolved in alcohol, 
and separate from it on distillation without any particular 
products resulting, however frequently we distil the same 
portion of alcohol with the same portion of acid ;—such 
are the tartarous, citric, malic, benzoic, oxalic, and gallic 
acids: and I have no doubt, although I have not made the 
experiment, that the suberic, succinic, mucous, pyro-tar- 
tarous, moric, and honigstic acids are in the same _predi- 
cament. But this is not the case with the acetic acid: its 
reaction on alcohol is such, that by means of several di- 
stillations, the two bodies disappear and form’a true ether: 
hence I] conclude that this acid is probably the only one, 
of all the vegetable acids at present known, which exhibits 
the above or any other analogous phenomenon. 
But when, instead of placing the vegetable acids in con- 
tact 
