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POPULAR SCIENCE REYIEW. 
fashion, and we have to collect the testimony of competent scientific men 
who live and work in isolation. Mr. Way, who was formerly on the Rivers’ 
Commission, has published his judgment on this question in a report on the 
analysis of a sample of water. It is to the effect that he uses and has con- 
fidence in the rival process of Wanklyn and his colleagues, which, it is 
admitted, gives results in opposition- to Dr. Frankland’s. Dr. Angus Smith, 
who, as our readers possibly know, has been for some time engaged in a very 
important investigation of the organic matter existing in the atmosphere, has 
also given in his adhesion to the other process, which he employs in his re- 
searches. The late Dr. W. A Miller rejected Dr. Frankland’s process and 
employed Mr. Wanklyn’s in his later investigations, undertaken for the 
medical department of the Privy Council. Dr. Voelcker, chemist to the 
Royal Agricultural Society, rejects Dr. Frankland’s process and adopts the 
other. Dr. Letheby has often expressed a like opinion. Indeed, says the 
writer in conclusion, we scarcely know a single chemist of reputation who 
approves of Dr. Frankland’s water- analysis ! ! 
The asserted Alkalinity of Carbonate of Lime. — Mr. William Skey, Go- 
vernment Analyst, New Zealand, re-asserts the alkalinity of the above. He 
says, in a paper of his which appeared in the second volume of the “ Trans- 
actions of the Wellington Philosophical Society, that he asserted the alka- 
linity of carbonate of lime, but the correctness of this assertion having been 
disputed by Mr. Charles R. C. Tichborne, F.C.S., M.R.I.A., &c., of the 
Laboratory of the Apothecaries’ Hall, Ireland, in a communication to the 
editor of the li Chemical News” (vol. xxii. p. 150), he has re-investigated 
this subject and extended his researches upon it, by which he has arrived 
at results corroborative of the correctness of his statement, and which show, 
besides, that a large number of salts hitherto maintained to be neutral, or 
respecting which nothing has been affirmed, are in reality alkaline. This is 
important, for it may be regarded as conclusive so far as Mr. Skey’s re- 
searches are concerned. — Vide u Chemical News,” March 28. 
The new Hydrocarbon : Abietene. — Mr. W. Wenzell, who writes in the 
“ American Journal of Pharmacy,” March, 1872, says that this hydrocarbon 
is the product of distillation of the terebinthinate exudation of a coniferous 
tree indigenous to California, viz., the Pinas sabiniana, a tree met with in 
the dry sides of the foot-hills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, and locally 
known as the nut-pine or digger pine, owing to the edible quality of its 
fruit. A gum resin, or rath eis balsam, is obtained from this tree by incisions 
made in its wood, and the balsam submitted to distillation almost im- 
mediately after having been collected, owing to the great volatility of the 
hydrocarbon (or essential oil, because abietene really stands in the same 
relation to the balsam alluded to as oil of turpentine stands to the exuda- 
tion derived from other Pinas species). The crude oil, as usually met with 
for sale at San Francisco, is a colourless limpid fluid, requiring only to be 
redistilled to obtain it quite pure. The commercial article is used under 
different names — abietine, erasine, theoline, &c. — for the removal of grease 
and paint from clothing and woven fabrics, and likewise as an efficient 
substitute for petroleum-benzine. The ultimate composition of abietene is 
not stated, but the author points out at some length the differences existing 
between abietene and terebene (oil of turpentine). 
