CHEMISTRY. 5-37 



and that fair hair and blue eyes were universal ; ccerulei oculi rutilaeque comas. 

 The present Gaul is generally swart, and so are very many Germans ; and civili- 

 zation a thousand years since gave these a general and warm covering to the 

 whole person. However that may be, the alteration in hue, which I have noted, is 

 a fact of which I have no doubt. It has been accompanied by a greater suscepti- 

 bility to cold, and to the inroads of those diseases which that susceptibility pro- 

 duces." 



D. W. 



CHEMISTRY. 



— Greville Williams has published in extenso his very beautiful re- 

 searches upon the products of the distillation i if cinch mine. F< irmerly ehinoline was 

 supposed to be the sole product, but Williams has shewn that it is a complex body 

 containing two or more homologous alkaloids. He has now examined various chlo- 

 rides, oxysalts and double salts of ehinoline, also the action of sethylic, methylie and 

 amylic iodides upon it, by which substitution bases are produced. Moreover, he 

 has proved that Iepidine, which accompanies ehinoline, is also to be found in coal- 

 tar, and he has succeeded in obtaining sethylo Iepidine. He Las also discovered a 

 new base in coal tar, which he names cryptidine. These three are homologous 

 nitrile bases. Chinoline, C l "H 7 X. 

 Lepidine, C°-°H 9 N, 

 Cryptidine, C^IP'X. 

 Iod — tzinsky denies the assertion of Chatin, that the absence of iodine 

 the air, is one of the causes of goitre aod cretinism, inasmuch as he found 

 no iodine in the air of Vienna, which is free from those complaints. This ex- 

 peri ! . ntinued over a period of four months, and the potash-solution, 

 through which the air was as found to contain no iodine, but unmis- 

 takable traces of nitric acid Ch. G. 329. 



[nop substitutes hromate for the iodate of potassa, employed 

 by Liebig in testing for iodine, in those eases where a reducing agent, such as 

 sulphurous acid, is present, by which of course iodine would be separated from 

 the iodate. An excess of the bromate must be avoided, as the blue colour is 

 destroyed. Ch. G. 332. 



Nitric Oxide, — A. Briining has examined the action of nitric oxide upon anhy- 

 drous sulphuric acid, and arrives at the conclusion that the nitric oxide absorbs 

 one equivalent of oxygen from the sulphuric acid, forming sulphurous acid, and 

 nitrous acid, which latter then unites with two equivalents of sulphuric acid, 

 firming the solid substance described by PrevosUye and Rose, and which the 

 latte: i d to be a compound of nitric oxide. Ch. > . 332. 



Flu . — Ton Babo and Mullet- have observed that the flame of sulphu- 



1 hydrogen has remarkable power in producing fluoresi hibited by 



a solution of quinine, an setherial solution of chlorophyll, green and violet 



fluor-spar, and more especially by the yellowish-green uranium glass. 



8ulphate of Nickel. — Maligna'' has found that the quadratic ci Iphate 



