340 



Prof. E. N. Horsford on Glycocoll, fyc. 



the time, means, and patience of the young chemists in his school. 

 He brings to bear his vast experience in this most difficult of all 

 chemical labor — the preparation in their purity of chemical 

 substances. 



He had been employed six months in finding out a better 

 method than that of Braconnot or Mulder, for obtaining gelatine 

 sugar, when in the winter semestre of 1845-46, I expressed a 

 wish that he would give me, for a change from the labors in 

 which I had been for some months engaged, a crystalline body, 

 whose study would increase my knowledge of organic chemistry. 

 In compliance with this request he gave me some three ounces 

 of exquisitely beautiful transparent prismatic crystals, whose 

 analysis I employed myself immediately in making. He re- 

 marked to me of the method of preparation and of some of its 

 properties, and of much more that I could not retain, and I went 

 to the back journals to ascertain what investigation of it had been 

 made; at the same time making repeated analyses of the pure 

 body, its hydrochlorate and anhydrous sulphate. 



The result of this labor and 

 yses, satisfied me that the constitution of the body^ combining 

 with acids, bases, and salts, was 



When 



C 4 H 4 N0 3 . 



-— *-**a»j vvuvmOlUli X UO.VA. 1XKJV jl^l*v* -* — 



in the Comptes Rendus, containing Dessaigne's discovery, and 

 felt indebted to no one for the constitution of the body. 

 Gerhardt's suggestion that the body was 





C 



H s N0 2 



with his annotation, or C, H. NO 



C 4 H 10 N 2 O 4 



* 



* 



big and Gnielin, I could not reconcile with the analysis of the 

 anhydrous sulphate ; and this also came under my eye after my 

 opinion of the constitution had been formed. , - 



Dessaigne had the honor of having made one of the most bril- 

 liant of recent discoveries, but he made no analysis. Laurent 

 made an analysis in the wake of Dessaigne's announcement, con- 

 firming the suggestion of Dessaigne, that hippuric acid \yas a 

 compound of benzoic acid and gelatine sugar. The latter how- 

 ever is not the body, glycocoll, but its hydrate. . . 



After my paper went into the hands of the conductor ol h&- 



Mulder 



C bH 10 N 2 O 8 



m Erdmann and Marchand's Joun_, _ 

 was not the body, but its hydrate doubled. 



This howerer 



