432 
Correspondence. 
fjuiy. 
over the cut. This experiment is very interesting as showing 
the nature of the venation of the petals and segments of the 
perianth, and is an illustration of the similarity of the construe- 
tion of the petals and perianth. 
Of the colouring-matters mentioned above it has been found 
that none of those which are precipitated by carbonate of soda 
are absorbed by flowers. 
By using white flowers, and placing them in various solutions 
of dyes, the beauty of the specimens that can be obtained almost 
surpasses the power of imagination : thus we have a white flower 
with a delicate green centre ; one consisting entirely of the most 
splendid emerald-green ; one delicately veined with pink ; another 
firmly dashed with red through the whole of its petals ; and, 
lastly, one in which the flower has decorated itself by separating 
from a mixed solution the blue which it judiciously divides from 
the pink, placing it in a beautiful fringe at the edge of its petals, 
while carefully reserving the pink as a contrasting uniform tint 
for the centre of the flower. — I am, &c., 
A. A. Nesbit. 
THE SYNTHESIS OF ORGANIC COMPOUNDS. 
To the Editor of the Journal of Science. 
Sir, — Allow me briefly to remark upon a statement which occurs 
in a review of Dr. Cleland’s “ Relation of Brain to Mind,” in the 
May number of the “ Journal of Science.” The sentence to 
which I refer is the following : — “ It may not be irrelevant to 
point out that the organic syntheses, of which modern chemistry 
is so proud, start not from bona fide dead matter, but from the 
remains of what was once living.” Here you of course allude to 
the production in the laboratory of such substances as camphor, 
the artificial glucosides, the indigo group, and other complex 
bodies ; but the words quoted, if taken literally, may prove mis- 
leading to some of your less scientific readers. It is indeed evident 
that compounds such as the above are subject to the same laws 
which determine the simplest chemical union, and that no argu- 
ment can be based upon the apparent impossibility of producing 
them from their elements. The word “ organic,” as applied to 
the chemistry of the carbon-compounds, is universally recognised 
as a misnomer, in so far as it implies the agency of some pecu- 
liar vital force in animal and vegetable organisms, which does 
not exist in the mineral world. So soon as the paraffins and 
cyanides were formed from “dead matter,” the synthetic pre- 
paration of the corresponding alcohols, aldehyds, acids, and 
