544, Dr. Simpson on the Action of Bromine 
and any mechanical action may be produced by musical tones 
and noises, if a wire stretched by a weight be passed through the 
glass tube in such a way that the flaring gas-flame must burn 
upon it. 
15. If the flame of the chemical harmonic be looked at stead- 
fastly, and at the same time the head be moved rapidly to the 
right and left alternately, an uninterrupted streak of light is not 
seen, such as is given by every other luminous body, but a series 
of closely approximated flames, and often dentated and undulated 
figures, especially when tubes of a metre and flames of a centi- 
metre in length are employed. 
This experiment also succeeds very easily without moving the 
eyes, when the flame is looked at through an opera-glass, the 
object-glass of which is moved rapidly to and fro, or ina circle ; 
and also when the picture of the flame is observed in a hand- 
mirror shaken about. It is, however, only a variation of the 
experiment long since described and explained by Wheatstone, 
for which a mirror turned by watchwork was employed. 
(Nore. It is perhaps but right that I should draw attention to the 
relation of the foregoing paper to one that I have published on the 
same subject. On the 6th of May, and the days immediately follow- 
ing, the principal facts described in my paper were discovered ; but 
on the 30th of April the foregoing results were communicated by 
Prof. Poggendorff to the Academy of Sciences in Berlin. Through 
the kindness of M. v. Schaffgotsch himself, I received his paper 
at Chamouni, many weeks after the publication of my own, and 
until then I was not aware of his having continued his experiments 
upon the subject. We thus worked independently of each other, 
but as far as the described phenomena are common to both, all the 
merit of priority rests with Count Schaffgotsch.—J. T.] 
LXII. On the Action of Bromine on the Iodide of Acetyle. 
By Dr. Maxwett Simpson*, 
E know from the researches of Regnault, that the iodide 
of ethylene of Faraday (C* H*1*), when treated with an 
alcoholic solution of potash, gives amongst other products an 
ethereal liquid boiling at 56° Cent. This is the iodide of ace- 
tyle (C*H®I). Chemists usually regard this body as the homo- 
logue of the iodide of allyle (C° H°I). As the latter compound 
is converted by an excess of bromine into a terbromide, with 
which M. Wurtz has recently succeeded in regenerating the gly- 
cerine of the fats, I thought it would be interesting to ascer- 
tain whether or not the compound C*H°I, submitted to the 
* Communicated by the Author. 
