August 10, 1872.] THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
105 
"but I may mention that common gypsum may be had at 
some 30s. per ton, sulphuric acid and sulphate of iron at 
7s. 6d., and alum at 10s. per cwt. The humus or soil has its 
own great especial merits, while the three sulphates, along 
with the sulphuric acid, combine their several utilities 
and constitute an admixture well adapted to the objects 
in view, namely, the effective and inoffensive conserva¬ 
tion of the products of animal waste and decay until 
they can be returned to the soil. This admixture will 
grasp the ammonia compounds, whether in esse or in posse, 
firm and fast: and as for the phosphates, they will like¬ 
wise be laid hold of and retained. Every farm steading, 
according to its dimensions and requirements, ought, at 
the outside of every year, to be provided with hundreds 
or thousands of tons of this prepared humus, properly 
stored, and at hand in order to be effectively utilized. 
The ordinary summer soil, dried and levigated, answers 
every purpose as a main ingredient; clays, however, cal¬ 
cined and levigated, might be resorted to. The waste 
refuse of brick and limekilns, road dust, turf, and coal 
ashes, charred seaweed, and charred peat, so far as the 
supply sufficed,. might also be had recourse to. The 
foregoing effective and economic compound might fur¬ 
ther be advantageously employed wherever animal 
waste was liable to be deposited, as in provision stores, 
slaughter-houses, sheep-pens, fowl-houses, catgut fac¬ 
tories, knackers yards, pigstyes, stables and stable yards, 
pork and fish curing establishments, and the like. The 
water now employed in the closet system, leading as it 
does to extended cesspools, beneath the level of the 
streets, fouling the rivers and foreshores of the sea, ought 
to be entirely superseded by sanitary humus instead. 
The importance of common soil as a deodorizer and dis¬ 
infectant, as we find from Roman and Israelitish records, 
was not unknown to the ancients. By the moderns its 
utilities have been strangely neglected. The inhabited 
suifaces of India are dense with trodden-down ordures. 
The towns and villages of Europe are in little better 
case. And yet feculence, of whatever description, ought 
to be consigned to the soil, and never for a moment suf¬ 
fered to pollute our dwelling-places, or those of the crea¬ 
tines whom we associate with us. In my treatise entitled 
3Zo> al Sanitary Economy , published some twenty years 
ago, the subject w r as dwelt upon in the strongest terms. 
I he resultant admixture of sanitary humus and fecu¬ 
lence, fluid and solid, might be preserved until needed in 
suitable receptacles, slate or brick lined, or dried, as in 
the sample now exhibited, by a moderate temperature, 
in kilns or otherwise. The sooner, however, the pro¬ 
cedure here described could be resorted to, the better 
would it prove at least, if we are to realize the great 
objects to be accomplished. The recent bones of a horse 
oi ox weigh,^ let us say, from 80 to 100 lb. ; of a man, 
from 11 to 15 lb. ; of a sheep or swine, from 10 to 15 per 
centum of its living weight. Now, all the phosphorus—■ 
oi, if we prefer the expression, all the phosphates of the 
bones, brain, and nerve structures generally, along with 
all. the azotized excreta, or possible ammonia, which, 
guided by the laws of tissue metamorphosis, I calculate 
at one-half the amount of phosphates—that is to say, all 
the bones and all the flesh of any given animal—find 
complete transit from within to without in about ten 
veeks or so, mainly through the kidneys and allied 
sti uctures, and, owing to our present treatment of them, 
are almost utterly lost and dissipated. The proportions 
and the time as above stated, though not absolutely, are 
appioximately true, inasmuch as tissue change is much 
moie rapid with some than others, but with young 
animals and children at least twice as rapid. Otherwise, 
the calculations are founded on physiological data, and 
in the main correct. Suppose we take the horse or ox in 
illustration. . During each and every year of its life, 
then, this animal, and other animals in proportion, sheds 
or expends, be the same more or less, 1000 lb. avoirdu¬ 
pois of the phosphates, and about 5 cwt. of nitrogenous 
compounds, both of which all-important substances, 
human wants and the requirements of the soil regarded, 
are now as effectively lost and dissipated as if that phos¬ 
phorus and that nitrogen were actually thrown into the 
gieat deep a destination, indeed, which, for the most 
part, they positively incur, or as if the annual tens of 
millions sterling which the lost phosphates and ammonia 
of transition may be supposed to amount to were squan¬ 
dered similarly. By the judicious application of sanitary 
humus, the nitrogenous and phosphatic compounds, the 
amount furnished by the individual multiplied by the 
grand aggregate of living beings, might, I believe, be 
effectively saved and utilized, thus supplying a mine of 
wealth to which all the Potosis and Golcondas in existence 
were the merest trifles in comparison. In effect, animal 
waste, both fluid and solid, could bo turned to full ac¬ 
count, the general health and well-being prodigiously 
enhanced, and the yield of the soil multiplied to an extent 
to which I am quite incompetent to fix a limit .—The 
Gardeners' Chronicle . 
THE CHEMISTRY OF THE HYDROCARBONS. * 
BY C. SCHORLEMMEB, P.R.S. 
[Concluded from page 69.) 
Besides the aromatic hydrocarbons having the general 
formula, C n H 2r ,: 6 , there exist others containing less 
hydrogen. The constitution of these can also be readily 
ascertained. Thus styrolene, C 8 H 8 , obtained from 
styrax, yields on oxidation benzoic acid, a proof that it 
contains only one radical, combined with the aromatic 
nucleus. Its constitution is therefore C 6 H 5 .C 2 H 3 , or it 
may be considered as ethylene, in which one atom of 
hydrogen is replaced by the group, C G H 5 , and indeed in 
many of its reactions it behaves exactly like an olefine, 
combining with one molecule of bromine, etc., and being 
easily converted into polymeric modifications. 
When styrolene dibromide is acted upon by alcoholic 
potash, two molecules of hydrobromic acid are abstracted 
from it, and acetenyl-benzene, C 6 H 5 .C 2 H, is formed. 
This reaction corresponds exactly to the formation of 
acetylene from ethylene. Acetenyl-benzene shows, in 
fact, very great resemblance to acetylene, forming, like 
the latter, metallic derivatives, as C 6 II-.C 2 Na; C 6 H 5 .(J 2 Ag\, 
etc. 
Although the hydrocarbons which are homologous 
with benzene, behave in most of their reactions, like 
saturated hydrocarbons, yet, under certain conditions, 
they can be made to combine directly with other 
elements, like the olefines, and other so-called non- 
saturated compounds. Thus benzene can combine with 
one, two, and three molecules of chlorine. These 
chlorine addition-products still contain the carbon-atoms 
combined together in a closed chain; they are very 
unstable bodies, and are again readily converted into 
compounds in which the carbon atoms are linked 
together, as in benzene itself. 
Also hydrogen can combine with aromatic hydro¬ 
carbons, but only with those w r hich contain alcohol 
radicals. The number of the atoms of hydrogen com¬ 
bining with such a hydrocarbon, appears to depend, not 
only on the number of the radicals present, but also on 
their relative positions. Benzene does not take up 
hydrogen ; methyl-benzene combines with one molecule, 
dimethyl-benzene (isoxylene) wuth two, and trimethyl- 
benzene (mesitylene) with three molecules. 
Oppenheim has shown (Deut. Chem. Gres. Bcr., v. 94) 
as I have already mentioned, that oil of turpentine 
belongs to these addition products. By abstracting two 
atoms of hydrogen from it, the hydrocarbon C 10 H 14 is 
formed, which must be either diethyl-benzene, or 
* A lecture delivered before the Chemical Society, April 
4th, 1872. Reprinted from, the ‘ Journal of the Chemical 
Sooiety’ for June, 1872. 
