Association for the Advancement of Science. 467 



Section B. — Chemical Science. 



Dr. Daubent gave an aoconnt of a New Method of Refining 

 Sugar, conducted at Plymouth by Mr. Oxl'and, and known by 

 bis name. It consists in the adoption of the superphosphate of 

 alumina in conjunction with animal charcoal, as a substitute for 

 the albumen usually employed for that purpose. In both cases 

 the object is to separate and carry down the various impurities 

 which colour and adulterate the pure^saccharine principle present 

 in the syrup expressed from the cane or other vegetable which 

 supplies it. As, however, bullock's blood is the material usually 

 procured for the purpose of supplying the albumen, a portion o^ 

 uncoagulated animal matter, together with certain salts, is left in 

 the juice in the ordinary process of refining, which impairs its 

 purity and promotes its fermentation — thus occasioning a certain 

 loss of saccharine matter to result. Nothing of the kind happens 

 when the superphosphate is substituted, and so much more perfect 

 a purification of the feculent matters, under such circumstances? 

 takes place, that several varieties of native sugar, which, from 

 being very highly charged with feculent matters, are rejected in 

 the ordinary process of refining, are readily purified by this method 

 The employment of superphosphate of alumina also gets rid of so 

 much larger a portion of the impurities present in the sugar, that 

 much less animal charcoal is subsequently required for effecting its 

 complete clarification than when bullock's blood has been resorted 

 to. The quantity of superphosj^hate necessary for effecting the 

 object is, for ordinary sugars, not less than twelve ounces to the 

 ton ; whereas, for the same quantity, as mu^jh as from one to four 

 gallons of bullock's blood is found to be required. Dr. Daubeny 

 suggested that this re-agent might be advantageously resorted to 

 not only in the purification of sugar, but also in other processes of 

 the laboratory, when the removal of foreign matters, intimately 

 mixed with the solution of a definite component, becomes a neces- 

 sary preliminary in its further examination. 



Mr. R. L. Johnson then read a paper on Illuminating Fe^t 

 Gas. He stated that it is now nearly half a century since a Par- 

 liamentary Commission appointed by Government to report on 

 Irish peat, named the town of Sligo and the Hill of Howth as the 

 extreme points of a straight line, and Galway and Wicklow Head 

 as the extreme points of another straight line, between which 

 two straight lines lay the six sevenths of all the peat in Ireland, 



