424 é Scientific Intelligence. 
The substance is accordingly bimucate of amyl-oxyd or mucamylic 
acid. When pure, its solution is not precipitated by salts of lead, silver 
or baryta, nor by ammonia. With the latter, as with caustic pota ash and 
soda, it instantly decomposes, amyl- Bicol being set free. Its boiling 
aqueous solution smells faintly of fusel oil, owing to gradual decompo- 
sition ; its cold solutions become mouldy in warm weather but do not 
appear to undergo decomposition. It is incapable of expelling carbonic 
acid from its weakest combinations. 
The mother og ae sometimes eas = a ae white pci with 
ammonia which may have been mucamid, thus making the existence of 
the neutral ether sectehios That body was ie however ohtnitel sep- 
arately. 
I: is not a little remarkable, that while in the ethyl series the neutral 
mucic ether is easily obtained, and the acid ether rarely and by chance, 
in the amyl series we nome is of easy preparation, while the neutral 
compound is not obtai 
It is further roaiashable: that this ether, so stable in solution and in - 
‘the presence of alkalies, is, unlike the analogous ethyl compound, im- 
peer Hf ta by soluble bases. 
On Terrestrial Magnetism ; by €ol. Sazine, (communicated for 
ae Journal, by “i eawecx. \—Col. Sabine, V.P.R.S., communicated 
to the British Association, 25th September, 1854, a very remarkable 
and important paper on terrestrial magnetism. rc will be recollected 
that at the meeting of the Association in 1838, a request was made to 
the British eon that it should cause Ca on the phenom- 
ena of magnetism by officers of the army and navy to be made at fixed 
stations, and i means of sag expeditions. The request was promptly 
acceded to, and Col. Sabine, who was and has continued on duty at 
Journal will have seen that various Americans have entered zealously 
into the same pursuit, and the observations of others are intercalated 
biped aa form a part of, the observations, whose sensi we are about 
As carly as 1825, Col. Sabine had inferred that an influence was ex- 
erted by the sun ane moon on terrestrial magnetism. In a set of ob- 
same time, the diurnal variation reached.5° ; but that when they were 
at right angles to each other this quantity fell as low as 20’. The 
sagacity he exhibited in his inference from this isolated set of ob- 
servations has been sustained by the laborious and patient observa- 
tions and discussions of fifteen years. Some quantities so minute are 
developed in the researches, that a less time would hardly have served 
to separate them from the larger quantities in which they are involved. 
results set forth by Col. Sabine are as follows : 
(. ) The sep a following in all places the order of solar 
time, and being at aximum about two hours after noon, changes its 
sign at the time | on two equinoxes. Thus, while the maximum 
eenersicn (core magnetic meridian is eastward in all places 
amount 
