472* [Assembly 



" The most beautiful results which organic chemistry has at- 

 tained within the few years past, consist, without contradiction, 

 in the artificial reproduction of substances of an animal or vege- 

 table origin. At this day, the chemist no longer extracts his 

 Formic (ant) acid from the little insect whose name it bears, 

 and who secrete it — but with far greater advantage from sugar, 

 starch or gum. They also extract oxalic acid, employed in the 

 fabrication of painted cloths j for sugar, starch or gum furnish it 

 promptly and economically. From blood, horns or flesh, the 

 cyanures are made and urad obtained, and the latter from the 

 excrement of birds, reptiles and insects. 



" With this uric acid is prepared the crystallisable principle 

 contained in the allantoic liquor of the fcetus of the cow, tlie ren- 

 net. With wax it forms the acid contained in mutton suet, from 

 the fat of a man, and from butter. With wax, whale fat, all thick 

 oils, the succinic (amber) acid is produced, and much finer, and 

 in larger quantities, than that from resin. We make starch sugar ; 

 the essence of bitter almonds gives us benzoin. We make the 

 acid of valerian and of butter with the products of the fermenta- 

 tion of sugar. These beautiful discoveries, and many more with 

 which organic chemistry is enriched — being artificial reproduc- 

 tions ot substances — would, unless we knew the processes, tempt 

 us to believe that the chemist had supernatural power or magic 

 power ', to behold, in fact, the creation of living nature, born, as 

 it were, in the crucibles and vessels of the chemist. The trans- 

 mutation of the base metals into gold seems less difficult. 



" The processes are either analytic or by agents of combustion, 

 synthetic. The first are far more familiar in chemistry than the 

 latter. A crowd of animal and vegetable substances have been 

 produced by making the reacting oxygenants, such as nitric acid, 

 hydrate of potash, aqueous chlore, chromic acid, act upon other 

 substances more carbonized or more hydrogenated. By the aid 

 of these re-actives we have (as it were) burned, or rather simpli- 

 fied, the most complex molecules presented by the organic king- 

 dom. In this view the chemist is acting directly against the 

 course of vegetation. The carbonic acid and the water are re- 

 duced, the oxygen taken away, the carbon and hydrogen main- 



