Sor technical analysis of Petroleum. 231 
I was about to commence a technical examination of several 
specimens of California petroleum, when the above mentioned 
paper arrested my attention, and I was unpleasantly conscious 
when I had finished its perusal that in respect to apparatus for 
this department of research my want was just as far from being 
supplied as it was six years since, when I commenced the study 
of eae age I had but a small quantity of each specimen, 
and besides subjecting them simply to fractional distillation, I 
Wished to test them by Young’s process of distillation under pres- 
sure. T'o conduct the latter process in glass was an impossibility. 
) purpose therefore, my apparatus must fulfil 
the following conditions. It should be capable of working not 
more than one and one-half liters, and admit of being heated 
by an ordinary gas furnace. The joints should sustain a pres- 
sure of forty pounds per square inch, and it should be so con- 
structed as to admit of the ready extraction of the coke. I 
could find no description of any such apparatus, but after nu- 
merous failures and corrections, in an apparatus of my own in- 
vention I found my want so well and fully supplied, that lam 
to offer a description, for the benefit of those who, like my- 
self, have felt the need of such an instrument. _ 
pon each extremity of a piece of a wrought iron gas-pipe, 
. three inches in diameter and twenty inches in length, a cap is 
tion they may be more firmly secured. The pipe is then put 
d off in such a manner as to leave 
be applied. The edges of each extremity of the pipe with the 
bands are now carefully turned off, presenting smooth surfaces 
ety beveled inwardly. The plane surface of each of the 
“8S 18 then n 1ts 
actly fit the beveled edge of the pipe. This completes the retort. 
A stout parallelogram is then made half an inch longer and 
Wider than the retort, one of the shorter sides of which should 
* the projection upon the disc. This may be 
€ Irame., : 
Two holes are then drilled a short distance from either ex- 
tremity of the retort, and in a line lel to the axis of the 
. One of these should admit a _ — nea 
42 inch gas-pipe. With this arrangement the retort may be usec 
either eat distillation, or for distillation by the ordinary 
is qe slay adiaisa of being connected with an appa 
