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11. On the Formation and some of the Properties of Cymidine, the Organic Base of the 
Cymole Series. By the Rev. John Barlow, Chaplain-in-Ordinary to Her Majesty's 
Household at Kensington Palace, M.A., F.R.S., Fice-President and Secretary of 
the Royal Institution of Great Britain, 8fc. 
Received June 14, — Read June 21, 1855. 
By submitting the nitro-compounds of the series of hydrocarbons, of which benzole 
is the lowest term, to Zinin’s well-known process, chemists have successively obtained 
the organic bases corresponding to these hydrocarbons. Aniline, toluidine, xylidine 
and cumidine have been prepared in this manner. Aniline was obtained by this pro- 
cess by Zinin* himself in 1845 ; toluidine by Muspratt and Hofmann -f-, in 1845 ; 
xylidine by Cahours in 1850 ; and cumidine by Nicholson, in 1847 Whilst the 
last-named chemist was engaged in the laboratory of the Royal College of Chemistry 
with the study of cumidine, the derivative of cumole. Dr. Noad, at the suggestion of 
Dr. Hofmann, pursued the same direction of research towards cymole, the only 
remaining hydrocarbon of this group, with a view of completing the series of the 
alkaloids \\. In his experiments on the action of concentrated nitric acid on cymole, 
Dr. Noad found that this hydrocarbon differs somewhat from the other members of 
the series. Instead of furnishing the nitro-substitute, which is the link of connexion 
between the hydrocarbon and the alkaloid, cymole was found to undergo a partial 
oxidation, a portion of the carbon being eliminated in the form of carbonic acid with 
the simultaneous formation of several acids which belong to a group of bodies stand- 
ing lower in the scale of organic compounds. The study of these very interesting 
acids, toluylic and nitrotoluylic, appears to have detached Dr. Noad’s attention from 
the formation of the substitution-product of cymole ; and when he again returned to 
this inquiry he soon quitted it, in order to pursue still further a research in which he 
had already been successful 
At the suggestion, and under the direction of Dr. Hofmann, the following investi- 
gation has been made, in the hope of filling up a gap still existing in the series of 
* Journal fvir practlsche Chemie, Band xxxvi. S. 98. 
f Mem. Chem. Soc. vol. ii. p. 367. + Comptes Rendus, tome xxx. p. 321. 
§ “ On Cumidine, a new Organic Base,” Reports of Royal College of Chemistry, p. 178. 
II Mem. Chem. Soc. vol. iii. p. 421. 
^ “ On some of the Products of the Decomposition of Nitrotoluylic Acid,” Philosophical Transactions, 
vol. cxliv. 
