Royal Society. 1 iS 



cane. sugar ; identical in composition with which are the purest spe- 

 cimens of the loaf-sugar of commerce. This contains carbon 41-38, 

 and water 58-62 ; but the principle in the abstract was regarded as 

 consisting of carbon 44-4'4, and water 55-55. The other variety of 

 sugar was obtained from Narbonne honey, and consisted of carbon 

 36-,36, and water 63 63. Between these two extremes, sugars of 

 almost every possible grade occur, analyses of some of which were 

 given. The next class of bodies considered, was the amylaceous ; 

 and the author commenced with some remarks on the sense in which 

 he employed the term merorganized. He stated that he had satisfied 

 himself from many observations that the minute quantities of foreign 

 bodies found in all organic products, instead of being mechanically 

 mixed with them, as usually supposed, perform the most important 

 functions ; in short, that organization cannot exist without them : 

 that when a crystallized substance passes into the organized 

 state, its chemical composition frequently remains essentially the 

 same, and that the only difference which can be traced in it, is the 

 presence of a little more or less of water, and invariably of minute 

 portions of some of the foreign bodies above alluded to ; these ap- 

 pearing not only to destroy its power of crystallizing, but usually 

 to change entirely its sensible properties. This subject he promised 

 fully to illustrate hereafter, but proposed in the mean time to adopt 

 the word merorganized, to designate all those substances formed 

 essentially on the principles of crystallized bodies, but not capable 

 of assuming the crystalline form, probably on account of the pre- 

 sence of the foreign bodies above alluded to *. 



Starch from wheat appears to be the most perfect form of this 

 principle, and yields from 37 to 43 per cent of carbon, according 

 to the degree of its desiccation. Arrow-root contains still more 

 water capable of separation ; and it is to the want of attention to 

 these circumstances that the author assigned the different results ob- 

 tained by chemists with respect to the composition of starch, which, 

 in the abstract, or free from water, he considered to be identical with 

 cane-sugar similarly circumstanced. 



Vinegar, the next principle considered, has in all ages and coun- 

 tries been more or less used as an aliment. Dr. P. had long since 

 seen reason to suspect that the hydrogen and oxygen in this acid 

 existed in the proportions in which they form water; and by means 

 of tlie apparatus described in the paper, he was at length enabled 

 to satisfy himself on this point. He found that acetate of copper 

 produced no change of bulk in the oxygen employed. This acid 

 consists, by his experiments, of carbon 47*05, and water 52'95. It 



• Tiie author observed in a note, that though his attention had been 

 long forcibly directed to the fact alluded to, namely, the singular degree 

 in which ail bodies are liable to be afTcctud by the presence of minute quan- 

 tities of forei^'ii matters (Croiii living animal bodies by the subtle matters of 

 contagion and miasmata on the one hand, down to common crystalline 

 bodies on the other), yet that he could form no distinct notion of their 

 vwdiix o/wrandi till the publication, in the Fhil. Trans, for 1824, of Mr. Her- 

 schel's admirable paper " On certain motions produced in fluid conductors 

 when trunsniittinji the electric current," which threw an entire new light 

 on the subject. 



Nfv: Series. Vol. 2. No. 8. Aug. 1827. U is 



