SCIENTIFIC SUMMARY. 
315 
President of the Physical Society of Edinburgh, has contributed a paper on 
this subject to the u Armais of Natural History” for April. He gives a 
minute account of five species, thus: Quercus Sadleriaha , Q. (Erstediana , 
Q. echinoides, Q. oblongifolia, and Q. Jacobi. In all, seventeen species of 
Cupuliferse find a place in the flora of the region to the west of the Pocky 
Mountains, northward of and including Upper California, which immense 
extent of territory, so varied in its climate and physical features, is generally 
known as North-west America. As he has already described and figured 
most of these species for a general work on the forests of that country (now 
in course of publication), he does not mention them in this place ; and for 
the same reason he has omitted to give figures of the species he has here 
described, these figures, with more extended descriptions, being intended to 
find a place in the same work. 
CHEMISTRY. 
The Formation of Ozone by Resin Oils has been the subject of a paper 
by Mr. C. R. C. Tichborne, which was read at a meeting of the Royal 
Irish Academy. The author said, when light resin oils were submitted to 
the combined action of atmospheric oxygen and light, ozone was produced 
in abundance. ( w Such oils, when poured upon a solution of iodide of po- 
tassium, instantly produce blue iodide of starch.”) At the same time the 
boiling-point of the oil was raised. Ozone was probably the prime mover 
in the production of colophonic hydrate, a substance discovered about two 
years ago by himself. All the terebine oils on exposure to light produced 
this effect. That obtained from pine seeds was said to possess this property 
in a most marked manner : oils of lemon and bergamot in a slight degree. 
The resin oils possessed this property more decidedly than ordinary oil of 
turpentine. Mr. Tichborne, by experiments, showed the action of those 
ozonified oils upon iodide of potassium. 
The Chemistry of Seed Germination has been investigated by Herr Dr. 
Vogel of the Royal Bavarian Academy (“ Proceedings,” vol. ii. No. 3, 1870). 
A memoir published in the foregoing Proceedings, and which has been ab- 
stracted in the usual valuable columns of the u Chemical News,” contains 
the detailed account of a series of experiments made by the author, with a 
view of ascertaining the effect which various substances (as, for instance, 
aniline, amorphous phosphorus, dilute solution of permanganate of potassa, 
sulphate of copper, dilute acetic acid, dilute hydrocyanic acid, arsenious 
acid, illuminating gas, naphthaline, and other substances have upon the 
germination of vegetable seeds. Among the substances which thoroughly 
impede, aud even destroy, the power of germination, the author mentions 
dilute (0-21 per cent.) acetic acid and phenylic acid (1 drop to 50 c. c.) It 
appears that otherwise the germination is not much affected by very dilute 
aqueous solutions of most of the substances above qupted. 
Illumination by a Substance called Carboxygen. — The a Journal fur Gasbe- 
leuchtung” (No. 8) contains a paper on this subject by Dr. J. Philips. The 
carbolin (the fluid used in the lamps invented by the author) costs about 
