Intelligence and Miscellaneous Articles. 73 



leaving oil of almonds for some weeks in contact with a concen- 

 trated solution of potash; 3rdly, by dissolving oil of almonds in a 

 weak solution of potash ; in a tew days benzoine begins to deposit 

 in crystalline delicate needles. The colour which it has when thus 

 prepared is got rid of by solution in boiling alcohol, and treating it 

 with animal charcoal : by repeated crystallizations it is obtained 

 perfectly pure in brilliant colourless prismatic transparent crystals. 

 Benzoine has neither smell nor taste: it is insoluble in cold water, 

 and but slightly so in hot; and separates on cooling in small crystal- 

 line needles. It is more soluble in hot than in cold alcohol. At 

 about 300° Fahr. it melts into a colourless liquid, which on cooling 

 becomes a mass of radiated crystals ; when more strongly heated it 

 boils and distils : it burns readily with a sooty flame. 



Neither concentrated nitric acid nor a boiling solution of potash 

 acts upon it: sulphuric acid forms with it a violet blue solution, which 

 soon becomes brown, and assumes when heated a deep green co- 

 lour; but it then disengages sulphurous acid, and the mass soon be- 

 comes black : in these properties it resembles the hydruret of ben- 

 zoyle, and appears to be an isomeric modification of it ; and it also 

 gave by analysis 



Carbon 79-079 



Hydrogen 5*688 



Oxygen 15-233 



100- 

 which is the same atomic constitution. 



This substance could not be changed into oil of bitter almonds; 

 but when fused with hydrate of potash, it gave, as the oil does, ben- 

 zoic acid and hydrogen gas. 



The authors of this paper consider the substance which they have 

 called benzoyle, the formula for which is 14 C + 10 H + 2 O, as 

 a fixed compound element, which preserves its nature and composi- 

 tion when combined with other bodies : thus, combined with an atom 

 of oxygen, it forms anhydrous benzoic acid ; and with an atom of 

 oxygen and one of water, the crystallized acid ; with two atoms of 

 hydrogen it is the oil of almonds deprived of prussic acid ; by ex- 

 posure to the air it takes two atoms of oxygen, one of which forms 

 benzoic acid with the radical, and the other combining with two 

 atoms of hydrogen, forms the proportion of water. 



Chlorine, bromine, iodine, sulphur, cyanogen, may take the place 

 of the hydrogen in the oil, and in the benzoic acid that of the oxy- 

 gen ; and the bodies which result, comparable with the correspond- 

 ing combinations of those simple bodies with phosphorus, all 

 form when decomposed by water an hydracid and benzoic acid. — 

 Ann. de Chim. et de Phys., li. 273. 



The Annates de Chimic et de Physique, tome li. p. 312, contains 

 a letter from Berzelius to the authors on the subject of the above 

 paper, in which he considers the discovery of this " compound 

 element " as the commencement of a new aera in organic che- 

 mistry. 



Third Series. Vol. \. No. 19. Jan. 1834. L 



