320 Chemical Society. 
stances free from nitrogen with caustic soda and lime. The result 
is, that his statements are incorrect. ‘There is not a trace of am- 
monia formed if the alkaline mixture as well as the employed sub- 
stances is quite pure, so that Reiset’s observations are not at all an 
objection to our method for determining nitrogen. I believe Reiset’s 
alkaline mixture contained nitre, or something else, otherwise he 
could not have obtained such results. 
“‘From my experiments I was led also to repeat Faraday’s in- 
vestigations on the formation of ammonia, and believe I shall find 
the cause why he sometimes obtained ammonia and sometimes not, 
by heating non-nitrogenous organic substances, or zine with hydrate 
of potash*.”’ 
57. “ On Athogen and the AEthonides,” by William H. Balmain, 
Esq. 
58. “ Report of some Experiments with Saline Manures contain- 
ing Nitrogen, conducted on the Manor Farm, Havering-atte-Bower, 
Essex,” by M. W. F. Chatterly, Esq. 
(These papers also will appear in an early number, ) 
December 20.—The following communications were read :— 
59. On the Division by Three of the Equivalents of the Phosphorus 
Family of Elements,” by Thomas Graham, Esq., F.R.S. (This paper 
will shortly be inserted in the Philosophical Magazine.) 
60. ‘ Remarks on the Determination of Nitrogen in Organic Ana- 
lysis,” by W. Francis, Esq. The presence of nitrogen in picrotoxine 
having been denied by all experimenters, the author was induced to 
repeat with great care the analysis of that substance, in the course 
of which researches abundant evidence of nitrogen was obtained. 
A few grains of pure picrotoxine, heated in a tube with a little of 
the mixture of lime and hydrate of soda, gave off vapours which 
quickly restored the blue colour to reddened litmus paper ; the smell 
of ammonia was also quite distinct. 
An analysis being made by the method of Messrs. Will and Var- 
rentrapp, in order to determine the amount of nitrogen, distinct yel- 
low crystals of the double chloride of platinum and ammonium were 
Obtained, corresponding in one experiment to 1°3 per cent. of nitro- 
gen, and in a second to 0°75 per cent. 
Burned with oxide of copper, numbers representing the carbon 
and hydrogen came out closely corresponding to the results obtained 
by Regnault. 
The observations of M. Reiset, in a late Number of the ‘ Annales 
de Chim. et de Phys.,’ threw some doubts upon the value of the ana- 
lytical method above mentioned, and the author was led in conse- 
quence to repeat the experiment on a specimen of carefully purified 
sugar: 1°649 sugar gave 0°048 of a brownish black substance on the 
filter, which calculated as the salt of ammonio-chloride of platinum 
gives 0°24 per cent. of nitrogen; on being burnt it left 0°035, which 
calculated as metallic platina = 0°30 per cent. nitrogen; 2°130 sugar 
* Dr. Will’s paper on these subjects will be found in the present Num- 
ber of the Philosophical Magazine, p, 286.—Enrr, 
