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X. An Investigation on the Chemical Nature of Wax. 
By Benjamin Collins Brodie, Esq. 
Communicated by Sir Benjamin C. Brodie, Bart., F.R.S., 8fc. 
Received March 2, — Read March 30, 1848. 
I. On Cerotic Acid, a new Acid contained in Bees' -Wax. 
In the summer of 1845, while studying at Giessen, in the laboratory of Professor 
von Liebig, I undertook, at the request of that distinguished chemist, the analysis of 
certain waxes which were the results of an experiment made by Herr Gundlach of 
Cassel, of feeding bees upon different kinds of sugar. It is not my intention to give 
those analyses here, and I mention them now only for the purpose of stating that it 
was this circumstance which first turned my attention to the inquiry of which I now 
offer the results to the Royal Society, and that it was in Professor von Liebig’s labo- 
ratory that this investigation was begun. 
Various chemists have before me undertaken a similar inquiry. The chemical 
history of a substance so abundant in nature and so useful to man as wax was always 
a curious question. Of late it has acquired a peculiar interest from our knowledge, 
derived from repeated experiments, that wax is formed in the organs of the bee, and 
that in the body of that insect that remarkable change of sugar into wax takes place, 
the knowledge of the true conditions of which would, we may hope, throw light upon 
the formation of fatty bodies, and on the way by which out of vegetable products 
the continual repair of the animal structure is effected. The first step to such a 
knowledge must be the accurate study of the chemical nature of those substances 
which are thus produced. 
But little progress however has been made in this inquiry. I may sum up in a 
few words those results already known which, by ray own experiments, I am able to 
confirm as true. It has been ascertained that wax is separable by alcohol into two 
portions, which have been called cerin and myricin ; that, by the action of potash 
upon wax, an acid or acids may be obtained, and also an unsaponifiable body, cerain ; 
and that by the distillation of wax we obtain volatile oils, solid hydrocarbon, and an 
acid which has been surmised to be margaric acid, from its resemblance to that 
substance. 
I say that these are the ascertained facts. The high atomic weight of these bodies, 
and the unavoidable errors of analysis, have rendered it easy to find formulm for 
them, and to speculate as to their nature. If, however, the views which, in the fol- 
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