— 152 — f 



to an abstraction of water, as would be supposed from the reaction with 

 concentrated sulphuric acid. When treated with potassium bisulphate or 

 bone acid menthol also splits off water. But the catalytic ation of these 

 reagents is considerably weaker that that of sulphuric acid. 



H. Rupe and W. Kerkovius 1 ) have demonstrated the possibility of a 

 complete steric decomposition of an inactive acid by means of menthol- 

 esterification. By allowing the chloride of a-phenylhydrocinnamic acid to 

 react with menthol in the presence of pyridine they obtained two esters, 

 one readily soluble, m. p. 58 to 62° ([«] D20 o — 84,99°) and the other a high- 

 boiling, sparingly soluble body, m. p. 100 to 101° ([«] D20 o — 21,97°). The 

 esters obtained from the optically active acids by means of primarily- 

 produced strychnine salts give almost the same rotation values as do the 

 esters mentioned above, namely, [«] D20 o — 89,06 ° and [«] D20 o — 21,97°. It is 

 a peculiar fact that the two optically active a-phenylhydrocinnamic acids 

 were rendered completely inactive after a short time by alcoholic potash. 



Thujyi alcohol. The paper on thujylalcohol published by Paolini 

 in the Rendiconti della R. Accad. dei Lincei (Vol. 20, I. Part. 10, p. 765) 2 ) 

 has lately been published in the Gazzetta chimica ital 42 (1912), I. 41 s ). 



V. Paolini and B. Divizia 4 ) call attention to the differences in the 

 constants which have been observed for tanacetyl alcohol. They quote a 

 compendious bibliography, and set forth a table of the constants of thujyi 

 alcohols prepared by different methods. 



The method described by Paolini 5 ), namely the purification of the acid 

 phthalic ester by repeated recrystallisation is, according to L. Tschugaeff 

 and W. Fomin 6 ), extremely cumbersome. A simpler method consists in 

 first recrystallising the cinchonine salt of the ester 3 or 4 times from 

 alcohol, and finally isolating the pure alcohol by hydrolysing with 

 potash liquor and driving off with steam. By this method the authors 

 obtained from the acid phthalate of crude thujyi alcohol, d-thujyl alcohol 

 (Md + 116,93°) of the density d^ 0,9187. The mother liquors remaining 

 after the separation of the crystalline cinchonine salt were worked up for 

 free phthalic ester, which can be most readily purified from the primarily- 

 produced strychnine salt, which is sparingly soluble. The regenerated 



!) Berl. Berichte 45 (1912), 1398. 



2 ) Comp. Report October 1911, 142. 



3 ) Chem. Zentralbl. 1912, I. 1011. 



4 ) Atti R. Accad. dei Lincei, Roma (5), 21, I. 570. Quoted from. Chem. Zentralbl. 1912, 

 II. 256. The authors have very kindly sent us a reprint of their paper. 



5 ) Comp. Report October 1911, 142. 



6 ) Berl. Berichte 45 (1912), 1293. 



