Moss — On an Irish Specimen of Dopplerite. 97 



rather widely from all the rest, the quantities per cent, of the 

 dry substance free from ash, in the case of nine specimens men- 

 tioned by Dr. Claessen and two by Professor Immendorff, are 

 carbon, 55-55 to 60-12 ; hydrogen, 4'77 to 6-29 ; nitrogen, 0-57 to 

 2-27; oxygen, 32.75 to 38-23. 



When the dopplerite from Sluggan bog is sliced into sections 

 about two millimetres in thickness, soaked in strong hydrochloric 

 acid for a day, and then washed in a Soxhlet extractor, until the 

 washings show no trace of chlorine with silver nitrate, the sub- 

 stance remains perfectly unaltered in appearance, and when dried it 

 is quite undistinguishable from a dried specimen of the original sub- 

 stance. The final washings to which silver nitrate had been added 

 slowly acquired a reddish colour, and after some time deposited 

 metallic silver. An analysis of dopplerite treated in this way gave 

 the following result : — 



Carbon, 57-90 



Hydrogen, 4-98 



Oxygen and Nitrogen, .... 36*69 



Ash, -43 



Owing to the small quantity of material available it was not 

 possible to determine the nitrogen ; the experiment, however, 

 shows that almost the entire ash may be removed without producing 

 any perceptible change in the appearance of the substance. The 

 constituents of the dopplerite capable of forming crystalloids with 

 hydrochloric acid evidently diffuse out of the colloidal mass, and are 

 thus almost completely removed. Whether the action of hydro- 

 chloric acid, and the subsequent long-continued washing, have any 

 effect in addition to the removal of mineral matter, cannot be 

 decided by a single experiment. The quantity of hydrogen in 

 the washed substance is, according to this single analysis, less than 

 in the original, while oxygen shows a slight increase, if it be 

 assumed that there is no change in the quantity of nitrogen pre- 

 sent. If I can obtain a sufficient supply of material, I hope to 

 investigate this point further. An important question to be 

 answered is — In what condition is the nitrogen present ? It 

 is certainly present almost entirely in organic combination. 

 M. Berthelot 1 points out that the action of ammonia on artificial 



1 Chimie Vegetale et Agricole, IV., p. 159. 



