310 Royal Society : — Messrs. Frankland and Duppa on the 



and published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, toI. xviii. 

 p. 91, the author refers to our memoir on the same subject printed 

 in the Philosophical Transactions for 1866, vol. clvi. p. 37, and ex- 

 presses his opinion that our interpretation of the nature of the re- 

 action must be erroneous because it involves the disengagement of 

 hydrogen. This opinion is founded upon certain experiments which 

 Mr. Wanklyn has himself made, and which are described in the 

 number of Liebig's ' Annalen ' for January 1869, and in the Chemical 

 Society's Journal, vol. ii. p. 371. 



In reference to this opinion we have to remark, first, that it is 

 founded upon experiments which differ essentially from our own, and, 

 second, that even the results obtained in those experiments by the 

 author do not warrant the conclusion, at variance with ours, which 

 he has drawn from them, viz. that the evolution of hydrogen in this 

 reaction is inadmissible. 



The reaction, the theoretical explanation of which Mr. "Wanklyn 

 seeks to controvert, is described in the Philosophical Transactions, 

 vol. clvi. p. 38, as follows: — "When acetic ether is placed in con- 

 tact with sodium it becomes hot, and a considerable quantity of gas is 

 evolved, which, after being passed first through alcohol and then 

 through water, burns with a non-luminous flame, and the products of 

 combustion do not produce the slightest turbidity on agitation with 

 baryta- water. In fact the gas is pure hydrogen. When the action is 

 complete, the liquid solidifies on cooling to a mass resembling yel- 

 low beeswax. By putting the sodium into the acetic ether as just 

 described, it is difficult to conduct the operation to completion, 

 owing to the liquid gradually assuming such a thick and pasty con- 

 dition as to prevent the further action of the sodium." Owing to 

 the difficulty of carrying the reaction far enough in this way, we 

 frequently employed a modification of this process, which is mi- 

 nutely described in the same memoir. The modification consisted 

 in placing the sodium in a separate vessel and causing the acetic 

 ether to distil continuously over it ; thus the portions of acetic ether 

 still unacted upon were brought, again and again, into contact with 

 the sodium, whilst the non-volatile product of the operation was re- 

 tained in a lower vessel. As we acted upon several pounds of acetic 

 ether at once, the operation frequently lasted several days, and 

 during the whole time torrents of hydrogen were evolved. The 

 temperature of the liquid in the distillation vessel was allowed to 

 rise to 130° C, and the amount of sodium consumed was not much 

 less than one atom for each molecule of acetic ether employed. 



We have made several attempts to determine quantitatively the 

 volume of hydrogen given off from a known weight of sodium, and 

 also from a known weight of acetic ether ; but in neither operation 

 could we obtain a trustworthy result : — in the first case because the 

 sodium, which fuses during the reaction, breaks up into a vast num- 

 ber of very minute globules, the final disappearance of which in the 

 highly coloured and pasty product it is impossible to verify ; in 

 the second case because the thickening of the liquid prevents the 

 reaction being pushed far enough to decompose the whole of the 



