520 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



VALVE GEARING. 



Mr. Edward N. Dickerson invited the Association to appoint a 

 committee to take a trial trip upon next Saturday morning upon 

 the steamer Kiang Tsi, which has two different valve gears for 

 working steam expansively, so arranged that either can be made 

 to operate independently of the other, one being exchanged for 

 the other instantaneously, by moving a handle, without any other 

 change of conditions, thus affording peculiar advantages for the 

 comparison. One of them is Winter's cut-off, and the other is 

 an improvement upon the Sickles' cut-off. 



On motion of Mr. Dibben, the invitation was accepted. The 

 following gentlemen were appointed as the committee : Messrs. 

 Dibben, Johnson, Bartlett, Rowell and Fisher. 



OK-GANIC CHEMISTRY. 



Prof. Seely. — This subject is so broad that I feel a little doubt- 

 ful what direction I shall give it. Fifteen or twenty years ago 

 there was no science of organic chemistry, and we should hardly 

 suppose from the school books upon chemistry that such a science 

 was now known as organic chemistry. There are only detached 

 and unsystematized statements to be found in them. Inorganic 

 chemistry, on the contrary, is very systematically taught; and I 

 know of no physical science more perfect in its details. Now, I 

 believe that organic chemistry, so far as our knowledge of it 

 extends, is just as perfect, and even more beautiful as a science. 

 In inorganic chemistry we learn that there are sixty-six elements, 

 which combine, according to certain laws, and names are given 

 to the compounds corresponding with the combinations. It is 

 all very systematic, and all very simple. So in organic chemistry, 

 we can make a catalogue of quasi elements. They are all com- 

 pounds, but they combine and produce compounds in a similar 

 way to the combination of the elements of inorganic chemistry. 

 In the only treatises which we have i?i extenso upon organic chem- 

 istry — not in English, but in German — there are catalogues of 

 these radicals, as they are termed, showing how they will unite 

 with each other, and what compounds will result. One interest- 

 ing fact is this, that in these classes you will find grouped toge- 

 ther the most various compounds in organic nature. Butter, for 

 example, which we might suppose only came from the cow, or 

 from an animal giving milk, we can produce in all sorts of ways, 



