Miscellanies. * 379 



serves, affords no explication of the fact experimentally determined 

 by Brugnatelli, that rock crystal and agate, introduced into the 

 stomach of a turkey were so attacked as to lose from twelve to four- 

 teen grains of their weight. This if true would prove the existence 

 of hydrofluoric acid in the gastric juice of gallinaceous birds. — Ann. 

 de Ch. et de Ph. T. 59. 1835. 



3. Thebaine; a new alkali in Opium. — This new substance was 

 discovered by M. Couerbe in the solution from which the muriates 

 of morphine and codeine had been separated by Gregory's process ; 

 that is, by evaporating this solution to the consistency of a syrup, 

 and after purifying it by hydrochloric acid, adding ammonia, which 

 occasions a black deposit of morphine and thebaine. Ether Slight- 

 ly dissolves the latter and thus may be used in separating them. 

 Thebaine thus prepared, is perfectly white, strongly alkaline, and 

 soluble in alcohol and ether. It fuses at 266° and resolidifies at 

 130°, whilst narcotine fuses at 338° and solidifies at 266°. Code- 

 ine fuses at 302° and meconine at 194°. Its composition, according 

 to M. Couerbe, is 



Carbon, 71.976 25 equivalents, 



Nitrogen, 6.385 2 " . , 



Hydrogen, 6.460 27 « ^eariy. 



Oxygen, 15.279 4 " 



GEOLOGY AND MINERALOGY. 



1. Subsidence of the coast of Greenland. — In a letter from Dr. 

 Pingel, of Copenhagen, to the President of the Geological Society 

 of London, it is stated, that the first observations which led to the 

 supposition that the west coast of Greenland had subsided, were 

 made by Arctander, between 1777 and 1779. He noticed in the 

 firth called Igalliko (lat. 60° 43' N.) that a small, low, rocky island, 

 about a gun-shot from the shore, was almost entirely submerged at 

 spring tides, yet there were on it the walls of a house fifty two feet 

 in length, thirty feet in breadth, five feet thick, and six feet high. 

 Half a century later, when Dr. Pingel visited the island, the whole 

 of it was so far submerged that the ruins alone rose above the water. 



The colony of Julianahaab was founded at the mouth of the 

 same firth in 1776 ; and near a rock, called the Castle by the Da- 

 nish colonists, are the foundations of their storehouse, which are 

 now dry only at very low water. 



