275 
of Edinburgh, Session 1879-79. 
celebrated Normal Solar Spectrum Map, which is taken as the 
standard reference for “place.” The observations were made in 
Lisbon during the summers of 1877-8, with apparatus prepared by 
the author ; who aimed at including everything visible, from the 
extreme red to the extreme violet ends of the spectrum, so far as 
that is amenable to the human eye after transmission through 
glass. 
The author also strove to include only true solar lines, with the 
least possible admission of such as are produced by the earth’s 
atmosphere. Finally, he compares his so far purified solar result 
against upwards of 5000 observations of laboratory workers in 
chemistry, after reducing them to the same spectrum scale; and 
finds indications that the solar chemical elements are incandescent 
in a probably far higher temperature than — probably twice as high 
as — anything yet attained by man. 
2. On another Method of Preparing Methylamine. 
By R. Milner Morrison, D.Sc. 
On a former occasion I drew attention to methyl sulphate of 
ammonium as a suitable material for the preparation of methylamine 
by heating it with quicklime. There is another and better method 
of arriving at the same result, the extreme simplicity of which was 
probably the cause of its being overlooked at the time. 
A glance at the formula of methyl sulphate of ammonium shows 
that it is an isomer of acid sulphate of methylamine, viz. : — 
CNH r S0 4 . 
°H 3so 
nh 4 s ° 4 ' 
Methyl sulphate of ammonium. 
cnh 7 so 4 . 
ch 3 nh 
H S ° 4 ' 
Acid sulphate of methylamine. 
Methyl sulphate of ammonium is an unstable salt, decomposable 
by a moderate amount of heat, while acid sulphate of methylamine 
is a much more stable body, hence it becomes probable that if the 
unstable substance be heated the atoms in the molecules of which it is 
composed will tend to arrange themselves in that order which is most 
stable at the temperature to which they are subjected, and therefore 
that in this case acid sulphate of methylamine will be produced. 
