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Short Papers and Notes. 
Chloride of Witrogen. 
HE dangerous quests upon which enthusiastic chemists 
may embark are strikingly illustrated by the case of the 
yellow oily substance called chloride of nitrogen. This 
terrible explosive was discovered in 1811 by Dulong, 
who lost one eye and three fingers in a vain attempt to 
ascertain its composition. So powerful is it that when Faraday 
and Sir H. Davy took it in hand they provided themselves with 
thick glass masks to protect their eyes from flying bits of glass, 
and to some extent from the irritating vapours of the oil itself. 
Faraday was on one occasion stunned by a detonation of only a 
few grains of the compound, and bits of the tube in which it had 
been contained almost penetrated his mask. On another occasion 
Sir Humphry Davy was severely injured by the explosion of a few 
drops under the receiver of an air-pump. Since their time the 
precise composition of the oil has been a mystery. At last, 
however, Dr. Gattermann, of Gottingen, has succeeded in its 
analysis. He finds that the substance examined hitherto was 
impure, and that the extreme danger of handling it was partly due 
to that fact, and partly to the varying action of light. Any bright 
light, he has found, is enough to produce detonation, a discovery 
made by the sudden destruction of his apparatus by a stray sun- 
beam. Chemical research now-a-days is apt to stray among the 
teeming pastures of organic chemistry, to the neglect of the old 
problems offered by the inorganic world, though the solution of 
these problems belongs to the highest efforts of experimental 
science. —Daily ews. 
The Otter at thome. 
Nothing is to be seen yet in the water or on the banks. A 
flash of bright blue shoots over the water and vanishes in a hole 
in the bank. It is the kingfisher, who has made his nest in a spot 
secure from harm. The bird has taken my attention from the 
tree in the water for a few moments. There is the otter sitting on 
the grey trunk in the warm sunlight. He is near enough for me 
to study his appearance and all his movements well. Like a large 
cat he looks, which has been thrown in the water and crawled out. 
Some people think that the fur of the otter throws the water off 
like the feathers on a duck’s back. ‘That is not the case; his fur 
