CERUMEN. 517 



merely gives the result of Vauquelin's analysis, without adding 

 any additional facts of his own.* Nor does he take any notice 

 of cerumen in his General Views of the Composition of Animal 

 Fluids, published in 1813.f But in the seventh volume of his 

 Traite de Chimie, published in 1833, he gives the result of a set 

 of experiments which he had made on that secretion. To these 

 chemists, so far as my knowledge extends, we are indebted for all 

 the chemical knowledge of cerumen which we at present possess. 



When collected, it has an orange-yellow colour, and a bitter 

 taste, and has a consistency nearly equal to that of soft wax. 

 When slightly heated on paper it melts and stains the paper like 

 a fixed oil ; at the same time it emits a slightly aromatic odour. 

 On burning coals it softens, gives out a white smoke similar to 

 that emitted by burning fat. It afterwards melts, swells, be- 

 comes dark-coloured, and emits an ammoniacal and empyreuma- 

 tic odour. A light coal remains behind. When cerumen is 

 agitated in water, it forms a kind of emulsion, which soon pu- 

 trefies, depositing at the same time white flocks, 



According to Vauquelin it is composed of, 

 Brown oil, . 62-5 

 Albumen, . 3 7 '5 



100-0 



The oil is butyracious and soluble in alcohol. The albumen 

 contains a bitter extractive matter, the proportion of which was 

 not ascertained. 



Berzelius found that when cerumen was treated with ether it 

 swelled up a little, and the ether extracted a fatty matter, which 

 scarcely communicated any colour to it. When we mix the 

 ether with water and distil, the fatty matter remains on the sur- 

 face of the water without being in the least soluble in that liquid. 

 This fatty matter has the consistence of duck's grease. It does 

 not redden litmus, melts easily into a transparent yellowish oil ; 

 but resumes its white colour on cooling and concreting. This 

 fatty matter contains stearin and olein separable from each other 

 by alcoh6l. It is easily converted into a soap, which has a smell 

 analogous to sweat. When the soap is decomposed by muriatic 

 acid, the oily acids separate in a white powder, which melts at 

 about 104. 



* Djurkemien, ii. 228. t Annals of Philosophy, ii. 19. 



