4 _ Dr A. Voelcker on the 



bination that it cannot be expelled by heat, provided the air 

 be excluded. According to Prout, a similar combination of 

 sulphur with carbon is easily obtained by washing on a filter 

 common gunpowder with water till all the nitre is removed, 

 and heating the insoluble part of the gunpowder in a retort ; 

 some of the sulphur will distil off, and part of it remain in 

 combination with the charcoal in the retort. This sulphur, 

 and the nitrogen, which is always found in anthracite, tes- 

 tify in favour of the vegetable origin of this mineral, and 

 appear to support the opinion of those who regard it as the 

 carbon-remains of organized bodies of the oldest formation, 

 in which the process of carbonification has proceeded still 

 farther than in coals. 



At all events, the above analysis furnishes an additional 

 proof of the erroneous notion of former naturalists, who re- 

 garded anthracite as primitive carbon. This notion, pro- 

 bably, has arisen from the fact, that anthracite, exposed to a 

 red heat, produces no hydrocarbons like coals, and that it re- 

 sembles carbon likewise, inasmuch as it is consumed by fire 

 almost entirely, leaving but a small proportion of mineral 

 matter in the form of ash behind. The loss incurred by 

 incineration of anthracite was generally calculated as carbon 

 by chemists, before the present methods of analysing organic 

 substances were known. Some observers, however, inferred 

 that water existed in a state of chemical combination in an- 

 thracite, as appears from a statement of Lampadius, in an 

 able paper on the Anthracite of Schonfeld in Saxony, which 

 appeared in Erdmann's Journal der Chemie, 1835, 4th Bd., 

 p. 393. By a careful observer like Lampadius, the presence 

 of sulphur and nitrogen in anthracite was not overlooked. 

 He likewise examined all the products of its dry distillation, 

 and obtained, besides water, a mixture of gases, which con- 

 sisted of carbonic acid, carburetted hydrogen, carbonic oxide, 

 and nitrogen. 



Similar results were obtained on analysis of two varieties 

 of anthracite from North America, which Professor Brei- 

 thaupt of Freiberg procured for him. These samples, from 

 Manchchunk in North America, and from Rhode Island, are 

 described by Professor Breithaupt as remarkably fine an- 



