matter, wool, dirt, and the white element of cellular tissue; it gave ammonia with potassa solution, and nitrogen by Laissaigne’s test, together with a strong smell of phosphuretted hydrogen when the water was added in the latter test. This residue burned, gave thirty per cent. of ash. The following is the per centage result for the adipocire:— Solid fatty acids, a little oleic acid, and coally matter, 94.2 Membranous matter and cellular tissue, 2.3 Ash and dirt, 3.5 ————— 100.0 The portion of fatty acid which passed through the filter by melting, contained 0.73 per cent. of a dark-coloured ash, principally lime, with iron, and traces of phosphoric and sulphuric acids, potash and soda. The potash and soda were detected by Dr. Lawrence Smith’s beautiful method by polarized light, which I have frequently used with success. In this instance, the quantity of material was so small, that neither the potash nor soda could be detected by the usual method. [An experiment was tried to ascertain whether the fatty acids would dissolve phosphate of lime. About six or eight grammes of fatty acid, (the residue from the hot press of the candle factories, crystallized from much alcohol, and of which one gramme left no appreciable ash by experiment) were kept for half an hour melted with pulverized bone ashes. One gramme of this gave an ash of only a quarter of a milligramme; when this was dissolved in hydrochloric acid and neutralized by ammonia, it was impossible to conclude whether there was a precipitate or not.] Sixty grammes of the fatty acids were then saponified with potash lye, according to Chevreul’s proportions, during which operation neither ammonia nor cholesterine could be detected. The soap was decomposed by tartaric acid, and washed several times by melting with water; it dissolved thus in alcohol with reddish brown colour, and after filtering hot, was suffered to deposit the greater part of its fat on cooling. The crystals thus deposited were nacreous scales, and of lustre like the feathers of moth wings; when melted, they weighed 26 grammes, and had a goat-like smell; by further standing, the alcohol deposited four grammes of very translucent crystals, with traces of stellar groupings. A third crop of crystals by spontaneous evaporation was obtained, which was small in quantity, weighing 0.6 grammes, and, when melted, cooled with a flat, waxy, surface, with traces of stellar aggregations. The mother alcohol of this last crystallization, was treated with an alcoholic solution of acetate of lead. The lead salts, treated in the usual manner by ether, yielded a few drops of very highly coloured oleic acid. From the insoluble lead salts, the fat was separated.