$92 Royal Institute of France. 
The chemical action of the solar rays on bodies is worthy of 
every attention on the part of the learned, by its influence on 
most of the phenomena of animated nature, and yet it has been 
hitherto but little attended to.» M. Vogel has just added some 
experiments to those which we possessed on this head. Am- 
monia and phosphorus, which do notact upon each other in the 
dark, emit in the light phosphorated hydrogen gas, aud deposit 
a black power composed of phosphorus, and ammonia intimately 
combined, Jt is nearly the same case with phosphorus and pot- 
ash. The action of the various rays is not always similar; the 
red rays do not produce any effect on a solution of corrosive sub- 
limate in ether; whereas the blue rays and a full light effect a 
mutual decomposition. The highly oxidated metallic muriates 
are brought in the same way to the minimum of oxidation. 
We said a few words the two last years on the researches of 
M. Chevreul Aide, naturalist to the Museum of Natura! His- 
tory, on soap and ‘saponification. This accurate experimenter 
has ascertained that the action of potash produces between the 
elements of grease new modes of combination, from which re- 
sult substances which did not exist completely formed before, 
and two of which, viz. margarine and a kind of oil or fluid 
grease, acquire all the properties of the acids. The author pur- 
suing his labours, ascertained that the same effects are produced 
by soda, the alkaline and various metallic oxides, and that the 
Substances resulting are in the same proportion whatever agent 
is made use of. Magnesia and alumine, on the contrary, con- 
fine themselves to contracting with fat a certain union, but 
without separating the elements into various compeunds, The 
quantity of alkali necessary for converting into soap a given 
quantity of fat is precisely that which can saturate the marga- 
rine, and the oil which this fat produces. Our laborious che- 
mist has terminated his memoirs on this subject, by assigning 
the capacity of saturation of the margarine and the greasy fluid, 
and by making known the properties of various new saponaceous 
combinations, which he produced by the play of double affinities, 
by mixing a hot solution of the fatty fluid and potash with va- 
rious earthy or metallic salts. He thus succeeded in making 
the soaps, the study of which had been hitherto neglected, al- 
most as well known as the salts, with which the chemists have 
been most of all occupied. 
The late M. Fourcroy had made known under the name of 
adipocire, a substance which is separated by means of the acids 
from the fatty substance into which the bodies of animals buried 
in the earth are converted, and he regarded it as the same with 
that which is extracted in the crystalline state from the biliary 
calculi of men, and with spermaceti. 
M. Chevreul, 
