46. REPORT—1868. 
The potteries in this district, being situated upon navigable rivers, have great 
advantages over their inland competitors, Staffordshire and Yorkshire. The ex- 
enses on clay from sea-freight and inland carriage average 13s. per ton to Staf- 
ordshire, and 5s, per ton to this district ; and in flints the advantage is still greater, 
in Staffordshire the average being 19s. per ton against 4s. 6d. per ton here. Coals, 
although a little dearer here per ton, are so much superior in quality that 80 tons 
of Newcastle coals are equal to 100 tons of Yorkshire or Staffordshire coals. 
_ About 1858, Messrs. Skinner and Co., of Stockton-on-Tees, first applied Need 
ham and Kite’s patent filtering-press for expelling the surplus water from the slip, 
which had formerly been done by evaporation. This is a much cleaner and better 
rocess than the old system, and is now adopted by thirty or forty potteries in 
yea and Scotland. With the exception of three potteries in this district and 
at Glasgow, machinery has been very little applied to the manufacture of earthen- 
ware, and even at these works not nearly to the extent to which it is capable of 
wae profitably adopted. One manufactory on the Tyne, Ford Pottery, having 
the best machinery, supplies at least 80 per cent. of the jars used by confectioners 
for marmalade and jam, &c., in England and Scotland. 
The description of goods manufactured in this district is that used by the middle 
and working classes, no first-class goods being made here. The principal markets, 
in addition to the local trade, are the Danish, Norwegian, German, Mediterranean, 
and London, for exportation to the colonies. The trade to the United States 
being so very small from here, the American war has affected this district less 
than any other. 
On the Constitution and Rational Formula of Narcotine. 
By Dr. A. Marruressen, F.2.S., and G. C. Foster, B.A, 
Chemists have been aware of the existence of narcotine, as one of the constituents 
of opium—the dried-up juice obtained from the capsules of the white poppy— 
since almost the beginning of the present century ; and the remarkable properties 
of the numerous derivatives which it yields, when acted on by various chemical 
reagents, have caused it to be made the subject of several extended investigations. 
Still, the constitution of narcotine, and of the products derived from it, has not 
hitherto been explained; and even its elementary composition has remained so far 
doubtful that some chemists have admitted the existence of three or four distinct 
varieties, each differing in composition from the rest. Ina paper published in the 
Philosophical Transactions for 1863, p. 345, the authors of this communication have 
shown that (adopting the atomic weights C=12, H=1, O=16, &c.) the composi- 
tion of narcotine is represented by the formula C”H**NO’, and is always the same. 
In the same paper they have shown that the composition of cotarnine is represented 
by the formula C'*7H™NO’; so that the action of oxidizing agents upon narcotine 
may be expressed by the equation 
C2H2NOQ7 4. 8) = CYVHYNO? + ©O1°F°O5, 
Narcotine. Cotarnine. Opianic acid. 
They have there also described several new transformations of narcotine, cotarnine, 
and opianic acid, which it is necessary, for the understanding of what follows, to 
recapitulate briefly in this place :— 
1. One molecule of narcotine, boiled with excess of hydriodic acid, yields three 
molecules of iodide of methyl. 
2. Cotarnine, heated with hydrochloric acid, yields chloride of methyl and cotar- 
namic acid :— 
CVH™NO* + HCl + H?0 = C'H*NO! + CH°Cl. 
Cotarnine. Cotarnamic acid. _ Chloride 
of methyl. 
3. Cotarnine, heated with dilute nitric acid, yields methylamine and cotarnie 
acid :— 
CYVHNO? + 2H?O = CUH”O0® + CH®N. 
ateaees Cotarnine. Cotarnic acid. Methylamine. 
