6 ON ADIPOCIRE, AND ITS FORMATION. 
With regard to the first of these, I possessed the following specimens of adipocire: 
(a) Two from sheep buried at the country seat of the late J. P. Wetherill. 
(6) Two from human subjects, which I obtained myself from a grave yard. 
(c) From a fossil ox, presented by Prof. Leidy. 
(a) SHEEP ADIPOCIRE. 
Specimens of this adipocire were presented to the Academy of Natural Sciences, by my 
uncle, who found them at his country seat, opposite Valley Forge, buried in moist ground, 
near a drain which led water from a spring-house. About ten years previously, the shepherd 
in charge of a flock of sheep indulged in a drunken spree, and in the meanwhile some 
fifteen of the sheep in his care died from neglect, and were buried in the above mentioned 
spot. My uncle, who was present at the exhumation of the sheep, stated that in some of 
the remains, the exterior forms of the muscles were very distinct. The two specimens 
I obtained were in lumps, amorphous under the microscope, floating on water; of greasy 
feel, and rank mutton smell, mingled with a peculiar disagreeable fundamental smell, that 
I have observed in all my specimens of adipocire, including the fossil one. Heated in a 
capsule with water, a transparent fat floats melted on the surface; heated alone in a 
platinum crucible, it melts and burns with a smoky flame, leaving a slight residue, which 
effervesces with hydrochloric acid, and contains beside sand and a little iron, principally 
lime. Under the microscope with moderate powers, it is white, fatty, and granular, dis- 
appearing with Canada balsam; with higher powers it is amorphous: melted on the glass 
slide covered with thin glass, is crystalline on cooling, in groups of plumose crystals, which 
give a beautiful play of colours with polarized light; a drop of its weak alcoholic solu- 
tion evaporated spontaneously on glass gave the same appearance of crystallization. Water 
added to this solution precipitated it in the form of a pure white amorphous powder: dis- 
tilled per se, leaves a slight carbonaceous residue, and gives a volatile fat, yellowish, and 
eryst, on cooling. This volatile fat is soluble in hot alcohol, and precipitates partly on cool- 
ing. The weight of material was seventy grammes; it was melted in the water bath, and 
filtered through paper in a hot funnel; the filtered solidified fat was of a light coffee colour, 
and weighed fifty-four grammes; in acapillary tube, is soft at 54°, fluid at 62°; on cooling 
becomes opaque at 50°. When pressed in paper, the latter is greased by oleic acid; it con- 
tains no ammonia, nor any nitrogen by the potassium test; the residue on the filter (together 
with the filter) was boiled with alcohol, filtered hot on a weighed filter, and washed with 
alcohol. This alcoholic solution deposited twelve grammes of fatty acid, by spontaneous 
evaporation, during the summer. The crystals at first deposited were white and warty; 
a portion of the alcoholic solution on a glass slide, exhibited with the microscope, white, 
curved dendritic forms, arranged stellate; in the capillary tube, they begin to melt at 53°, 
