290 DR. KANE ON THE CHEMICAL HISTORY OF ARCHIL AND LITMUS. 
ance and irregularity in my results, which at once showed me that specimens ob- 
tained at different times from different portions of archil had totally different elemen- 
tary constitutions. I soon found, however, that this difference fell altogether upon 
one constituent, the oxygen, for it appeared that the carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen 
were always in the same proportion to each other, but that the amount of oxygen 
present in the substance was liable to variation. At length, after a numerous series 
of analyses, I was enabled to assign the limits within which the variations were in- 
cluded, and to satisfy myself that the orceine, as prepared from archil, is in most cases 
a mixture of two substances, the proportions of which vary with the age of the archil, 
the oldest archil containing the most highly oxidized orceine. 
These are the substances, the existence of which I indicated under the head of 
archil, and to which I propose to give the names of Alphaorceine and Betaorceine. 
In all essential chemical properties they are identical. The same degrees of solubi- 
lity in water, in alcohol, and in ether ; generating the same purple liquor with the 
alkalies, and the same purple coloured lakes with metallic oxides ; and in all cases to 
be distinguished from each other by the results of their ultimate analysis alone. 
Under such circumstances it would be useless to bring forward the numerous ana- 
lyses which I made of specimens, which were ultimately shown to have been mixtures 
of the two varieties. On this account I shall only bring forward those experiments 
by which I was enabled to assign the greatest and least quantities of oxygen which 
orceine is liable to contain, and which were given by specimens obtained from por- 
tions of archil differing very much in age. 
For the determination of the azote, however, although variable mixtures were em- 
ployed, the results were always satisfactory ; indeed the relation of the carbon to the 
nitrogen being the same in both varieties, the relative volumes of nitrogen and car- 
bonic acid, determined by the method which I followed, was the same as if perfectly 
pure specimens of either were employed, and the results which follow were obtained 
by the combustion of ordinary mixed orceine. 
Tube. 
C0 2 + N. 
N. 
C0 2 . 
N. : C0 2 . 
A. 
600 
31*4 = 
568*6 .*. 
1 : 181 
B. 
151 
7*8 = 
143*2 .'. 
1 : 18*3 
C. 
552 
28-3 = 
523*7 
1 : 18*5 
D. 
373 
19-0 — 
354*0 .*. 
1 : 18*6 
E. 
226 
11*5 = 
214*5 .*. 
1 : 18*7 
These results, which agree unusually well with each other, fix the relation of carbon 
to azote as eighteen atoms of the former to one of the latter. This is the same pro- 
portion which Liebig assigned from considerations on the production of orceine from 
orcine, and hence the proportion of sixteen to one, assigned by Dumas from his ana- 
lysis of orceine, was thrown rather too low. The difference in the proportion of azote i 
per cent., on the supposition of eighteen to, one, or of sixteen to one, not being quite 
0-5 per cent., and hence being completely included within the limits of error unavoid- 
able in so difficult a process. 
