108 
MR. BRODIE ON MYRICIN. 
An intervening acid of the series, the acid C44 H44 O4, has lately been discovered by 
VoLCKER* in the oil of the Guilandina Moringa, and the investigation of the nume- 
rous class of vegetable oils and waxes will doubtless afford other bodies of the group. 
Notwithstanding the many different properties of these substances, we find their 
chemical analogies constant, and the mutual relation of the acid, the alcohol and the 
hydrocarbon, is the same between bodies containing sixty as between those contain- 
ing only four equivalents of carbon. Through at least half the series, from thirty to 
sixty equivalents, the same physical type of fat prevails. As a fat is doubtless but a 
soft kind of wax, so may not alcohol be but a very fluid form of fat ? Alcohol has not 
yet been solidified, but one cannot help suspecting that when solidified it will appear 
as a wax or fat. 
Direct experiment has shown us that in the body of the bee sugar is converted 
into wax. A simple analysis of the two substances showed that the carbon and 
hydrogen were in the same ratio in both, and that the change could be effected by a 
simple deoxidation of the sugar. Of* the way in which this change is effected we are 
ignorant. The true formula of these wax substances however shows that they belong 
to the very type of bodies which are the ordinary products of fermentation, and are 
connected with them by the strongest chemical analogies. A new mode of fermenta- 
tion produced butyric acid out of sugar ; might not another kind of fermentation 
produce wax r 
Until we know the nature of the whole of the ingredients of the wax, it is useless 
to speculate on the law of such a change. Although the wax itself is no pure 
chemical substance, but a mixture of substances differing nearly three per cent, from 
one another in their amount of carbon, yet the analysis of the whole bees’-wax gives 
results showing in different specimens which I have examined, no difference of eon- 
stitution which analysis can reach. This renders it probable that the action is definite, 
and that the sugar in all cases loses the same amount of oxygen, although the 
remaining elements may in different cases be differently grouped. 
* Liebig’s Annalen, vol. Ixiv. p. 342. 
