476 Proceedings of Learned Societies. 



retained there mechanically, and afterwards, combining with the 

 dye, serve to fix it in the material. What is technically termed 

 dead cotton does not take the dye, for being immature or imperfectly 

 formed fibre, it possesses no central tube ; it occurs in small quan- 

 tities along with ordinary cotton, and remains white and unaffected 

 after mordanting and dyeing. Mr. Crum exhibited numerous speci- 

 mens of dyed and printed cotton fabrics in which threads and 

 bundles of undyed dead fibres were very well seen. 



On the same evening Mr. Riley read a paper in which he 

 announced the presence of titanic acid in a number of specimens 

 of clay which he had tested for that substance ; he believed that it 

 was an invariable constituent of clay. He found also, that in all 

 cases in which the blast furnaces produced good iron, titanium 

 was present. This result is in accordance with the conclusions of 

 several chemists and manufacturers, who have pursued experiments 

 in the same direction. 



CHEMICAL SOCIETY.— June 5. 



Oxide of Ethylene : a Link between Organic and Inorganic 

 Compounds. — The recent meetings of the Chemical Society have 

 been peculiarly interesting, MM. H. St. Claire-Deville and A. 

 Wurtz having delivered two instructive and eloquent discourses 

 to a large concourse of its foreign and English members. 



The first-named of these illustrious French chemists gave an 

 account of the laws of Vapour-Densities, detailing more especially 

 the chief results of those experiments of his own which tend to 

 throw light upon certain apparent perturbations of these laws ; the 

 lecturer's comparison of such perturbations to analogous phenomena 

 in astronomy and other sciences was most happily conceived and 

 clearly enounced. 



Professor Wurtz's discourse on " Oxide of Ethylene, considered 

 as a Link between Mineral and Organic Chemistry," was given on 

 June the 5th. It is to M. Wurtz that we are indebted for the 

 discovery of many of the most important facts in the history 

 of that well-known hydrocarbon, ethylene, or defiant gas. The 

 first glimpse into the true character of this interesting product 

 was obtained by Herr H. L. Buff in 1855, but in the following year 

 M. Wurtz obtained from it several new derivatives, one of these, 

 more especially remarkable, having given him the means of pro- 

 curing the substance which formed the topic of his discourse. 



The gaseous hydrocarbon ethylene, represented in chemical 

 symbols by the formula C 4 H 4 , has been long known to combine 

 with two equivalents of chlorine, forming a heavy oily liquid, 

 OiHjClo, termed Dutch Liquid, or Oil of the Dutch chemisfs. 

 Now these expressions suggest nothing as to the constitution of 

 this product, but many views have been held with regard to it ; 

 some chemists, for instance, believing it to be a compound of 

 hydrochloric acid and chloride of vinyle (C 4 H S C1), because, when 



