Miscellanies. 361 
11. On a substance called inflammable snow; by M. Hermann, 
(Ann. de Pog. tome 28. p. 566.) J. G.—This substance fell from 
the sky on the 11th April, 1832, 13 werstes from the town of Wo- 
lokalamsk, and covered to the thickness of 1 to 2 inches a space of 
- 8to 10 square rultres. 
It was of a wine yellow, transparent, soft, and smelling like rancid 
oil. Its sp. gr. was 1.1. It melted in a close vessel, and yielded 
the common products of vegetable substances, leaving a brilliant 
charcoal. It burnt with a blue flame, without smoke. It is insolu- 
ble in cold water, but melts in boiling water, and then swims on the 
fluid. Boiling alcohol dissolves it. It dissolves also in carbonate of 
soda, and the acids separate from the solution a yellow viscous sub- 
stance, soluble in cold alcohol, and which contains a peculiar acid. 
The analysis, by oxide of copper, gave 
Carbon : i : 0°615 
Hydrogen. . 3 0-070 
Oxygen . i ‘ 0-315 
1-000 
which corresponds to the formula |OCH+40OH. I gave it the name 
of d’ral élaine, which signifies naa oil.— Annales des Mines, Juin, 
1834. 
12. Stearine a compound body. J.G.—Chemists have long since 
determined that animal fat contains two distinct substances, the one, 
élaine, constantly fluid at common temperatures, the other Stéarine, 
as constantly solid. 
M. Lecanu finds by experiment that Stéarine, especially that ob- 
tained from animal bodies, is formed of two distinct solid substances of 
unequal fusibility. To the least fusible solid he appropriates exclusive- 
ly the name Stearine. It does not grease the fingers like tallow ; it 
is hard like wax, inodorous, fusible at 62° Cent., slightly soluble in 
boiling alcohol, from which it separates by cold, largely soluble in 
warm ether, from which by cooling it separates in shining scales. 
Heated in the air it burns like fat bodies, but without the disagreea- 
ble odor of tallow. 
When saponified, it is completely transformed into stearic acid 
and glycerine. This stearine may easily be extracted from tallow, 
by treating the latter with five or six times its weight of boiling 
ether, which completely dissolves it, and deposites the stearine on 
Vol. XX VIII.—No. 2. 46 
