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CHEMISTRY. 



"Warrington's experiments at Rothamstead, 

 before referred to in the " Annual Cyclopaedia," 

 indicated that in "our clay soils the nitrifying 

 organism is not uniformly distributed much 

 below nine inches from the surface." In later 

 experiments, in which rather more soil was 

 placed in the solution to be nitrified, and a pro- 

 portion of gypsum was added, the results were 

 m many respects entirely different. No failure 

 to produce nitrification was observed in sam- 

 ples of soil down to and including a depth of 

 two feet from the surface; and in some in- 

 stances nitrification took place at as great 

 depths as four and six feet, but at seven and 

 eight feet all the experiments failed. 



Miscellaneous. John Trowbridge and C. C. 

 Hutchins have made new spectroscopic exam- 

 inations to determine the question of the ex- 

 istence of oxygen in the sun's atmosphere, 

 which is still a matter of doubt. Dr. Henry 

 Draper was firmly persuaded from the appar- 

 ent coincidences of lines of oxygen with cer- 

 tain bright spaces in his photographs of the 

 sun's spectrum, that oxygen existed in the 

 solar atmosphere ; and his investigation was 

 accepted by M. Faye. Prof. J. C. Draper also 

 reasoned that oxygen existed in the sun from the 

 coincidences of bright oxygen lines with dark 

 oxygen lines in the spectrum. With the use ot 

 spectroscopes of much wider dispersion power 

 than were at the command of these observers, 

 and therefore giving more numerous and accu- 

 rate data, the authors found that the " bright 

 lines " of the sun's spectrum vanished at once, 

 or no longer appeared as such, and all the ap- 

 parent connections between them and the oxy- 

 gen lines also disappeared. The hypothesis of 

 Prof. J. C. Draper, that the dark lines occupy- 

 ing the bright bands of Dr. H. Draper's spec- 

 trum is rendered untenable by the lack of any 

 systematic connection between the two. 



Dr. Edward Schunk, President of the Chem- 

 ical Section of the British Association, deline- 

 ated the probable future of chemistry in his in- 

 augural address. The question, he said, had 

 frequently suggested itself to him, will chemi- 

 cal science go on expanding and developing 

 during the next few generations, as it has done 

 in the course of the last hundred years, or will 

 there be limits to systematic chemistry i. e., 

 to the history and description of all possible 

 combinations of the elements? He was in- 

 clined to take the latter view. He thought it 

 probable that in the course of time, at the rate 

 at which we are now progressing, nearly all 

 possible compounds will have been prepared, 

 all the most important chemical facts will have 

 been discovered, and pure chemistry will be 

 practically exhausted, and have arrived at the 

 same condition as systematic botany and min- 

 eralogy, with only rarely a new plant or min- 

 eral to be determined, now are. But chemical 

 science would not cease. It would continue to 

 develop, but in other directions than those 

 previously pursued. As the botanist has still 

 a wide field of investigation in physiological 



botany, so the chemist will find extensive op- 

 portunities for research in such investigations as 

 those of the processes whereby the substances 

 constituting the various organs of plants and 

 their contents are formed, and those again to 

 which the decomposition and decay of vege- 

 table matter are due ; subjects as to which our 

 knowledge is quite elementary, but which, it 

 seemed to him, admitted of an extension and 

 development of which we have at present not 

 the least conception. The very first steps of 

 the process whereby organic or organized mat- 

 ter is formed in plants are hardly understood. 

 Granted that we are able to trace the forma- 

 tion in a plant of a compound of simple consti- 

 tution, such as oxalic or formic acid, how far 

 would we still be from understanding the build- 

 ing up of such compounds as starch, albumen, 

 or morphia ? ' The syntheses so successfully 

 and ingeniously carried out in our laboratories 

 do not here assist us in the least. We know 

 the steps by which alizarene is artificially pro- 

 duced from anthracene ; but does any one sup- 

 pose that the plant commences in the same way 

 with anthracene, converting this into anthra- 

 quinine, and having acted on the latter first 

 with acid, then with alkali, arrived at last at 

 alizarene? Indeed, the plant never contains 

 ready-formed alizarene at all. What "^?, have 

 observed from the beginning is a glucosule, a 

 compound of alizarene and glucose, which, so 

 far as we see, is not gradually built up, but 

 springs into existence at once. With respect 

 to the decomposition of organic and organized 

 matters, the author was inclined to think that 

 some of the younger chemists and physiologists 

 of to-day might live to see the time when all 

 the now mysterious and unaccountable pro- 

 cesses going on in the organisms of plants and 

 animals, including those of fermentation, will 

 be found to occur in accordance with purely 

 physical and chemical laws. 



In a lecture on the rate of explosion in gases, 

 delivered during the meeting of the British As- 

 sociation, Prof. Harold B. Dixon illustrated his 

 subject by performing the experiment of filling 

 a vessel full of hydrogen and allowing it to 

 siphon itself out while the air penetrated into 

 the vessel and mixed with the hydrogen. This 

 experiment, the author said, exhibited the three 

 divisions of gaseous explosions: the ordinary 

 combustion ; the vibratory movement, due, he 

 believed, to the explosion of the air and hy- 

 drogen in unison with the mass of the gas in 

 the tube ; and the explosion of the whole mass. 

 He believed there was some relation between 

 what he might call the mean velocity of trans- 

 lation of the products of combustion and the 

 bodies burned, which would be found to coin- 

 cide with the actual rate of explosion. The 

 study of explosions was of double interest an 

 interest attaching to the power which it offered 

 in the hands of men, and a grander theoreti- 

 cal interest attaching to the play of the natural 

 sources here shown in great intensity. In their 

 ordinary questionings of nature we were ac- 



