ON  RACEMIC  ACID. 
253 
confirmed  by  the  fact,  that,  in  a  manufactory  which  had  been  but 
a  few  months  in  work,  no  appearance  of  racemic  acid  had  mani- 
fested itself,  although  crude  Austrian  tartars  were  employed. 
Lastly,  the  preceding  conclusions  were  confirmed  by  facts  of  the 
same  kind  elicited  in  the  manufactory  of  M.  Seybel,  in  which  the 
employment  of  partially  refined  tartars  had  for  the  last  two  or 
three  years  been  discontinued,  and  last  winter  the  small  crystals  of 
racemic  acid  made  their  appearance,  which  were  at  first  supposed 
to  have  arisen  from  some  impurity  in  the  crude  tartars  employed. 
It  must  be  noticed  that  the  tartars  employed  in  M.  Seybel's 
manufactory  were  obtained  from  Hungary  and  Styria,  proving  that 
the  crude  tartars  of  those  countries  contained  racemic  acid,  as  well 
as  those  of  Austria  and  Naples. 
On  his  return  to  France,  M.  Pasteur  communicated  these  facts 
to  M.  Kestner,  and  assisted  him  in  his  endeavors  to  reproduce  the 
mysterious  acid  which  for  thirty  years  had  eluded  his  researches. 
For  this  purpose,  M.  Kestner  has  ordered  crude  Neapolitan  tartars, 
and  also  some  of  the  mother  liquors  of  the  tartar  refineries  evapo- 
rated to  dryness,  which  he  intends  operating  upon  as  crude  tartars. 
In  addition  to  this,  M.  Kestner  has  introduced  into  his  regular 
course  of  manufacture  the  crude  tartars  of  Tuscany,  and  has  already, 
in  the  third  crystallization,  obtained  racemic  acid,  thus  furnishing 
a  new  proof  that  this  acid  is  a  natural  product,  and  that  the  crude 
tartars  of  Italy  do  contain  an  appreciable  quantity  of  it. 
M.  Redtenbacher  has  since  written  to  M.  Pasteur,  to  the  effect 
that  M.  Seybel,  on  converting  the  mother  liquors  of  his  manufac- 
tory, which  had  been  accumulating  for  three  years,  into  tartrate  of 
lime,  had  decomposed  a  portion  of  that  salt,  and  that  the  acid 
liquor  obtained  yielded  several  kilogrammes  of  racemic  acid.  The 
quantity  of  liquor  undergoing  crystallization  was  about  1,400  kilo- 
grammes (28  cwt.)  This  result  coincides  with  that  obtained  by 
M.  Kestner,  whilst  working  up  the  mother  liquors  of  an  old  manu- 
factory, in  which  the  tartars  of  Saintonge  had  been  employed. 
These  mother  liquors  had  been  purchased  by  M.  Kestner,  and 
having  noticed  the  presence  of  racemic  acid,  he  worked  them  up 
by  themselves,  converting  them  into  tartrate  of  lime,  and  proceed- 
ing in  the  usual  way  to  manufacture  tartaric  acid.  The  tartrate 
of  lime  thus  obtained,  yielded  about  one  per  cent,  of  racemic  acid. 
Hence  M.  Kestner  concludes  that  the  tartars  of  France,  at  least 
