SCIENTIFIC SUMMARY. 
89 
to whicli capillaritj is attributed j and possibly, also, that this molecular 
attraction is only one form of affinity (or rather, that the two forces are one), 
so that in the capillary spaces the liquid is not in the same conditions, 
physical or chemical, which it presents when it is en masse. Not admitting 
that electricity has anything to do in causing these phenomena, he prefers 
to distinguish them as chemico- capillary instead of electro- capillary . 
A new Secondary Alcohol. — M. Lieben has obtained an alcohol isomeric 
with butyric alcohol by first treating ethylated chlorethyl with hydriodic 
acid, which gives ethylated iodethyl, and then treating this substance with 
moist silver hydrate. Together with the alcohol some butylene is formed. 
Oxidised by chromic acid the alcohol yields acetic acid, but neither butyric 
or isobutyric acids. It boils at 99°, and at 0° has a density of 0-827. Its 
constitutional formula is 
(C1I3 
c C3H3 
loH 
He has communicated his results to the Vienna Academy. 
A neio Synthesis of Hydrocyanic Acid. — The Comptes-lRcndtis for Dec. 7 
contains a paper by M. Berthelot on the formation of hydrocyanic acid from 
nitrogen and acetylene gases. It is sufficient to pass a series of sparks from 
a Ruhmkortf’s coil through a mixture of these gases in a state of purity to 
form the acid. But as a simultaneous but separate decomposition of the 
acetylene occurs, the dilution of the gases with hydrogen gas is practised 
in order to avoid this decomposition. Any other hydrocarbon will form 
prussic acid with nitrogen because of the fact that the electric spark passed 
through it will produce acetylene. M. Berthelot compares the formation of 
prussic acid from acetylene with that from cyanogen thus : — 
C2H2+N2=2CNH 
C2N2+H2=r2CNH 
GEOLOGY. 
The Causes of the Distribution of the Iron in Variegated Strata. — The 
November number of the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society con- 
tains Mr. George Maw’s paper on the Disposition of Iron in Variegated 
Strata, read some time since before the Society. It is an elaborate memoir 
on the subject, and is accompanied by forty admirable chromolithographs 
of sections of variegated rocks. His conclusions are, first, that the great 
majority of cases of variegation are independent of altered chemical com- 
binations, and more often than otherwise seem to have been induced by 
agencies not directly connected with chemical change. The very small 
proportion of them that can be accounted for by chemical change are due 
to the occasional conversion of the red anhydrous sesquioxide, or the lower 
