Chemistry and Physics. 53 
various special devices, such as pouring a solution of platinic 
chloride into a sulphide, drop by drop, or in fusing platinic sul- 
ammonium, thus resembling copper; 5th, t platinous sulphide 
y be considered soluble or insoluble according to hysical 
state and the nature of the sulphide used us salts occur 
G. F. B. 
4. On the Destructive Distillation of Phenol and Chlorbenzene. 
amined th d 
ceived were fractionated and yielded benzene, toluene, xylene, 
naphthalene, anthracene, and phenanthrene. Chlorbenzene thus 
treated gave diphenyl, parachlordiphenyl, paradichlordiphenyl 
and an isomer of it, and diphenylbenzene.—Liebig’s Annalen, 
elxxxix, 129, 135, October, 1877. . F. B, 
. Boracic Acid.—In the Annales de Chemie et de Physique, 
he calls the normal sea water, and he opens his paper with the 
following broad generalization: ‘Toutes les substances, salines 
existant en amas et en couches dans les terrains s¢dimentaires ont 
fait primitivement partie d’une mer normale. D’un autre cote, a 
In order to establish this conclusion in the case of the borates he 
gives in the first place experimental evidence that the water of 
the Mediterranean contains at least two decigrams of boracic acid 
in each cubic meter, and, further, that on evaporating the brine 
racic acid accumulates in the bittern until after the deposition 
of carnallite. In the second place, he insists that in the very 
characteristic deposits of Stassfurt the borates are found above 
e carnallite as we should expect, if these deposits were formed 
