there is both a vegetable acid and a neutral sulphate of lime,—to concentrate to a sixth, and agitate the residuum with four times its volume of sulphuric ether, in the expectation that this fluid will remove the free acid alone, and separate it from sulphates. But notwithstanding the authority of his name for the fact, pure ether will not remove sulphuric acid from a watery fluid; and etherized alcohol, which does remove it, takes it away also, like alcohol itself, from bisulphates. These results I have observed in some careful trials made along with Dr. Douglas Maclagan. I suspect, therefore, that where sulphates or bisulphates do exist, there is no absolutely satisfactory way of determining whether free sulphuric acid also co-exists, except by a quantitative analysis, for ascertaining whether the amount of acid and of bases corresponds with this supposition or not. And it is scarcely necessary to add, that so operose a method is scarcely applicable to ordinary medico-legal investigations. 3. It is seldom that the medical jurist is called on to search for sulphuric acid in either of the states already mentioned. Much more generally it has mingled with and acted on various organic substances. The circumstances in which it has usually to be sought for in the practice of medical jurisprudence are twofold,—on the one hand, in stains on clothes,—and on the other, in vomited matter, the contents of the stomach, or organic mixtures generally. _Process for analyzing stains on clothes._—When sulphuric acid is thrown upon your clothes, it produces a permanent red, reddish-brown, or yellowish stain, destroys the cloth entirely or renders it brittle, and in consequence of its strong attraction for water keeps the stain long in a moist state. In the course of the decomposition of the cloth a part of the acid is itself decomposed, sulphurous acid being disengaged. But it is an important medico-legal fact, that after a time the change either goes on very slowly, or is arrested altogether, possibly by the dilution of the acid with moisture from the atmosphere; and that consequently it may be discovered in a free state in stains after a much longer interval than would _à priori_ be expected. In the case of Macmillan formerly alluded to, Dr. Turner and I, who were employed by the crown to examine the different injured articles of dress, found on a man’s hat, stock, shirt-collar and coat many discoloured and corroded spots, which were sour to the taste fourteen days after the crime was committed; in the subsequent case of Mrs. Humphrey I discovered six-tenths of a grain of free sulphuric acid in two small spots on a blanket seven weeks after the crime; and from an express experiment on the same blanket with two drops of acid of known strength, it appeared that only one-half of the acid disappeared in seven weeks. It may therefore be inferred, that, in every instance where stains have been produced by concentrated sulphuric acid on clothes, at least on woollen