The Society has had its attention of late so much directed to the subject of coal, that some apology, perhaps, is necessary for bringing this substance again under notice. I may premise, however, that in doing so, it is not my intention to revive the disputed question as to Boghead gas-coal, nor to take up the time of the Society with what may be considered as unprofitable discussion. I purpose to bring forward a few facts relative to a coal, concerning which there is no dispute, and which presents some vegetable organisms and products calculated, in my opinion, to throw light on the history of carboniferous deposits. Much of the recent difference of opinion on the question of coal has arisen from the mode in which some histologists have chosen to define it. I trust that the result of all our discussions will be to lead to a fuller examination of coal in all its forms,—to a comparison of specimens, both mineralogically and microscopically, from different localities,—and, finally, to an extended report on the subject in which geologists, chemists, and histologists will combine.

In pursuing the investigation of the crystalline constituents of opium, which formed the subject of a previous communication to this Society, I have succeeded in obtaining from the same mother liquor which formed the raw material of my previous researches, a considerable quantity of papaverine, the base recently detected by Merck, and of meconine, the indifferent crystallizable substance discovered by Couerbe in the year 1830. The former was encountered quite unexpectedly in the precipitate from which narcotine and thebaine were prepared by the process described in the first series of these researches. The latter was only obtained after many fruitless trials, in which I was induced to persevere by the desire of comparing it with the substance discovered by myself among the products of the decomposition of narcotine by nitric acid, and described under the name of opianyl. The composition of that substance, as determined by my analyses, approximates very closely to that of meconine; and though the formula assigned to the former is double that obtained by Couerbe from his analysis of the latter, the sole reason for adopting the higher atomic weight was, that the mode in which opianyl was obtained by the decomposition of narcotine, afforded satisfactory grounds for establishing its true constitution.

In the preceding parts of the investigation of the products obtained by the destructive distillation of animal substances, I have entered fully into the method of treating the raw material, and have shown the existence in it of not less than three different series of bases; one, that of which methylamine is the type; a second, of which picoline is an example; and a third series, not yet further examined, to which the provisional name of pyrol bases has been applied. Besides these, aniline is also met with, but whether as an isolated substance or accompanied by the other members of its series, cannot be determined, as none of them possess sufficiently distinctive reactions to permit their detection in a complex mixture.