394 



NATURE 



[August 25, 1892 



nately the readings of the barometer are not corrected for diurnal 



variation, although the given values of /- are so corrected : and 



at 

 I can only apply approximate corrections, and so obtain approxi- 

 mate values of A/. 



Mauritius, April 29, 1892. 



The computed time of arrival is therefore 1.30 p.m., and the 

 agreement in the last column shows that the centre was directly 

 approaching the place of observation, and it really arrived there 

 at 2, or 2.30 p.m. 



Now at 6 a.m. the wind was 22-4 miles an hour ; (4) gives 

 dp 



dt 



0-0016; (2) gives r = 104; and (5) gives A/.. 



1-5. 



which is a little too small, the observed fall at the centre being 

 about 2"0. If, however, we compute Ape for 9 a.m., we get 

 2-4, which is a little too large ; and as in the case of time of 

 arrival, we should be guided by a series when possible. 

 Jamaica, July 29. Maxwell Hall. 



A Sparrow's Antipathy to Purple. 



I HAVE but just seen your number for March 10. About five 

 years ago I knew a tame sparrow with a great antipathy for 

 purple. It was brought up in a room, but not, or seldom, caged. 

 It lived four or five months. A piece of blue paper placed over 

 its food would cause it to hesitate, though if hungry it would 

 eventually draw the paper aside ; a person coming into the room 

 wearing a blue dress would make it quite wild, and a habit of 

 mischievously pecking at a certain part of the wall of the room 

 was successfully stopped by hanging a piece of blue paper there. 

 This sparrow was taught to be cleanly in its habits. I had put 

 off writing this to you in hopes that others who saw more of the 

 sparrow would have written a more detailed account, but trust 

 this letter may not be too late for any one interested to get a 

 young sparrow from the nest this year and rear it. Sparrows 

 have not yet reached Borneo. G. D. Haviland. 



Sarawak, June 17. 



Bumping in the Lane Fox Mercurial Pump. 



Can any reader of Nature favour me with a method by 

 which the bumping in the Lane Fox pump may be obviated ? I 

 find that when exhaustion is pressed to a certain point, the 

 bumping becomes so violent, in spite of the utmost care in 

 lowering the reservoir, that the bulb of the pump is constantly 

 cracked. D. G. 



Lahore, July 25. 



CARL SCHORLEMMER, LL.D., F.R.S. 



CARL SCHORLEMMER having been my friend and 

 colleague in Owens College for more than thirty 

 years, it is with a sad pleasure that I take up my pen to 

 record in the columns of Nature some few details of 

 his character and work. He had not, like his predecessor 

 Dittmar, been a fellow student with me in Heidelberg, 

 but had worked at chemistry in Darmstadt, where he was 

 born, and at Giessen. In 1858 Dittmar, who up to that 

 year had been my private assistant, obtained the College 

 appointment of Demonstrator, and he strongly urged me 

 to offer his vacant post to his friend Schorlemmer, a 

 young man of great promise. From the time of his 

 arrival in Manchester until the day of his death I do not 

 recollect that in all the intercourse of those years Schor- 

 lemmer and I ever had a single serious difference. 



NO. 1191. VOL. 46] 



Whilst my private assistant he and I examined the 

 relation which the aqueous acids exhibit as regards boil- 

 ing point and composition, and I remember well the 

 difficulties we had to contend with in distilling fuming 

 nitric and hydrofluoric acids under presstire, and I also 

 remember how successfully he met them. Once, I know, 

 he got some fuming hydrofluoric acid on his hand, and 

 he bore the scar of the serious burn to the end. This 

 work with me was his apprenticeship. In a short time 

 Dittmar left us, and Schorlemmer took his place as the 

 official Laboratory Assistant, and as we had not many 

 students at that time, he had leisure to begin the hydro- 

 carbon work which has placed his name high in the list 

 of organic chemists of the century. In 1861 the late Mr. 

 John Barrow, of the Dalton Chemical Works, Gorton, 

 brought me a sample of the light oils which he had 

 obtained in the distillation of cannel coal. At that time 

 our knowledge of the chemical composition of the low- 

 boiling coal-oils was very incomplete, and I urged Schor- 

 lemmer to undertake the investigation. This was the 

 beginning of the work which led to a result which alto- 

 gether modified the existing ideas concerning the con- 

 stitution of the paraffin hydrocarbons, and paved the way 

 for the sound foundation upon which the organic 

 portion of our science has since been successfully laid. 

 In order to appreciate Schorlemmer's results let us 

 for a few moments glance at the position of the 

 question when he cominenced work. Before 1848 

 the only known member of the paraffin series of hydro- 

 carbons, was methane CH^. In the above year the 

 researches of Kolbe on the electrolysis of the fatty acids, 

 and of Frankland on the isolation of the alcohol-radi- 

 cals, opened out new fields yielding a rich harvest. Each 

 molecule of these latter hydrocarbons was supposed to 

 contain two molecules of the radical methyl being re- 



presented as /-tj^ f j vvhilst together with these a second 



C H "i 

 series of hydrides was believed to exist, "it" r ethyl 



hydride standing in the same relation to the radical as an 

 alcohol does to an ether. The truth of this view seemed 

 confirmed by Wurtz's discovery of the existence of the 

 so-called mixed radicals in which two molecules of dif- 



C H i 

 ferent hydrocarbons, such as ethyl and amyl qy\ \ 



occurred. How was this question to be settled } Schor- 

 lemmer at once seized upon the correct method of solution 

 and carried it out successfully. If, said he, the radical 

 CH 1 C H } 



methyl pu^ r is identical with hydride of ethyl \j° ( 



not only must these two bodies possess the same proper- 

 ties, but both bodies must yield the same product, viz., 

 ethyl chloride, on treatment with chlorine. This identity 

 he proved, not only in the above — the most simple 

 case — but in the more complicated cases of ethyl-amyl 

 CHI C H ^ 



p2 5 I ajjfj of di-amyl (--"11" \ as these hydrocarbons 



yielded respectively chloride of heptyl and chloride of 

 decatyl, C^Hj^Cl. and CipH2iCl. It is difficult to over- 

 rate the importance of this apparently simple discovery. 

 It laid for ever the ghost of the existence of two sets of 

 isomeric hydrocarbons of the paraffin series, and paved 

 the way for Kekuld's theory of carbon combination, upon 

 which the whole modern theory of organic chemistry is 

 based. So to Schorlemmer belongs the credit of placing 

 in position the foundation-stone of our science. And at 

 once his name became known as a master wherever 

 chemistry is studied ; so that in 187 1 the Council of the 

 Royal Society admitted him to the Fellowship at once, 

 an honour conferred nowadays on few. 



But it was not only as an expert experimentalist that 

 Schorlemmer excelled, and his thirty-two papers cata- 

 logued in the Royal Society list prove that he was a suc- 

 cessful one. He possessed an exhaustive knowledge, un- 



