856 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. II. No. 51. 



mollusks, thirty species of brachiopods are 

 enumerated, the richest recent brachiopod fauna 

 known, and it may be added that Mr. J. E. 

 Ives has given an account of the Echinoderms, 

 Crustacea and Pycnogonida collected by Mr. 

 Stearns, in the Proceedings of the Academy of 

 Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, for 1891. 



W. H. Dall. 



ACADEMIES AND SOCIETIES. 



THE NEW YOEK SECTION OF THE AMERICAN 



CHEMICAL SOCIETY. 



The members of the New York Section of 

 the American Chemical Society dined at Mor- 

 rello's, on 29th street, on the evening of the 

 6th inst., and from there adjourned to the Col- 

 lege of the City of New York, 23d street and 

 Lexington avenue, for the regular monthly 

 meeting. This meeting was held in the lecture 

 room of Dr. Doremus, to which the Society had 

 been invited by that well-known chemist, and 

 Dr. Webb, the president of the institution. 



The meeting was called to order by Prof. P. 

 T. Austen, and after the reading of the minutes 

 of the last meeting, Dr. C. A. Doremus wel- 

 comed the Section to its new quarters, and re- 

 counted a brief history of the room and the 

 adjoining laboratories, which are now the oldest 

 rooms in the city devoted to chemical research 

 and instruction. Dr. Wolcott Gibbs, now of 

 Newport, and formerly of Harvard College, 

 was one of the earlier instructors and investi- 

 gators working in this place. 



On motion, the thanks of the Section were 

 extended to Dr. Webb and Dr. R. Ogden Dore- 

 mus for the courtesy and assistance extended 

 in these comfortable and commodious quarters 

 for the Section's work. 



The first paper on the program was that 

 of Dr. P. R. Moale, chemist to the New York 

 and Boston Dyewood Company, entitled, 'A 

 Brief History of Naphthalene. ' This brief his- 

 tory proved to be an exhaustive statement of 

 the progress of the development of naphthalene 

 from its first separation by Garden in 1820 from 

 the scale of the condensing vessels used in the 

 distillation of coal tar, believing it to be cam- 

 phor or something similar there.to, through the 

 work of Faraday, begun in 1826, Reichen- 

 bach, in 1831, to the later work of Dumas, 



Liebig, Wohler, Stas, Mitscherlich and Laurent, 

 De Saussure and others. 



Passing from the history of the formation and 

 occurrence of this body, the reader took up the 

 composition of the compound, presenting re- 

 sults of analyses by the several noted authorities. 



Opperman's result C^^H^C^H' 



Liebig and Wohler C^^H^CHs 



BerzeUus C'^H* 



Laurent C'^H^ or C^^H's 



Faraday C^H^ 



Dumas C*»H>6 



Dumas andStas C»oH" 



The reader then took up the constitution of the 

 compound. Beginning with the investigations 

 of Kolbe and Marignac in this regard he discussed 

 the results obtained by Berthelot, Ballo, Graebe, 

 Liebermann, Arnheim, Wreden, Claus, Baeyer 

 and Perkin, Fittig and Erdmann, Bamberger ; 

 and from which it has been shown that the for- 

 mula established by Graebe is that which must 

 at present be accepted as nearest the truth. 



In the discussion which followed, of the theo- 

 retical constitution of naphthalene, Mr. H. S. 

 Neiman was called upon, and gave his experi- 

 ence in attempting the synthetic preparation of 

 naphthalene for the purpose of throwing light on 

 its constitution. He stated that the decomposi- 

 tion of certain amido-naphthal-sulpho-acids hav- 

 ing a tendency to show that the position of the 

 double bonds in the naphthalene ring are not 

 symmetrical, attempts were made to disprove 

 this by the synthetic production from ortho- 

 xylene-tetra-bromide and ethane. By passing 

 ethane over a heated mixture of granulated 

 pumice stone and ortho-xylene-tetra-bromide, a 

 portion of naphthalene was formed, but circum- 

 stances prevented further investigation. This 

 formation would seem to show that the central 

 bond is a double one, and the formula a sym- 

 meti'ical one as far as the bonds are concerned. 



The second paper on the programme, that of 

 Dr. T. B. Osborne, of the Agricultural Experi- 

 ment Station at New Haven, Conn. , on ' Vege- 

 table Proteids,' is an exhaustive resumd of the 

 classic work of the author upon these interest- 

 ing and really little known bodies. He re- 

 viewed first the earlier investigations of these 

 coixipouuds, particularly those of Eiuhof, Ber- 

 zeUus, Dumas and Cahours, Ritthausen, Weyl 



