(b) Two from human subjects, which I obtained myself from a grave yard.

(c) From a fossil ox, presented by Prof. Leidy.

(a) SHEEP ADIPOCIRE.

Specimens of this adipocire were presented to the Academy of Natural Sciences, by my uncle, who found them at his country seat, opposite Valley Forge, buried in moist ground, near a drain which led water from a spring-house. About ten years previously, the shepherd in charge of a flock of sheep indulged in a drunken spree, and in the meanwhile some fifteen of the sheep in his care died from neglect, and were buried in the above mentioned spot. My uncle, who was present at the exhumation of the sheep, stated that in some of the remains, the exterior forms of the muscles were very distinct. The two specimens I obtained were in lumps, amorphous under the microscope, floating on water; of greasy feel, and rank mutton smell, mingled with a peculiar disagreeable fundamental smell, that I have observed in all my specimens of adipocire, including the fossil one. Heated in a capsule with water, a transparent fat floats melted on the surface; heated alone in a platinum crucible, it melts and burns with a smoky flame, leaving a slight residue, which effervesces with hydrochloric acid, and contains beside sand and a little iron, principally lime. Under the microscope with moderate powers, it is white, fatty, and granular, disappearing with Canada balsam; with higher powers it is amorphous: melted on the glass slide covered with thin glass, is crystalline on cooling, in groups of plumose crystals, which give a beautiful play of colours with polarized light; a drop of its weak alcoholic solution evaporated spontaneously on glass gave the same appearance of crystallization. Water added to this solution precipitated it in the form of a pure white amorphous powder: distilled per se, leaves a slight carbonaceous residue, and gives a volatile fat, yellowish, and cryst, on cooling. This volatile fat is soluble in hot alcohol, and precipitates partly on cooling. The weight of material was seventy grammes; it was melted in the water bath, and filtered through paper in a hot funnel; the filtered solidified fat was of a light coffee colour, and weighed fifty-four grammes; in a capillary tube, is soft at 54°, fluid at 62°; on cooling becomes opaque at 50°. When pressed in paper, the latter is greased by oleic acid; it contains no ammonia, nor any nitrogen by the potassium test; the residue on the filter (together with the filter) was boiled with alcohol, filtered hot on a weighed filter, and washed with alcohol. This alcoholic solution deposited twelve grammes of fatty acid, by spontaneous evaporation, during the summer. The crystals at first deposited were white and warty; a portion of the alcoholic solution on a glass slide, exhibited with the microscope, white, curved dendritic forms, arranged stellate; in the capillary tube, they begin to melt at 53°, are fluid at 62°, and on cooling begin to cloud at 58°, and are opaque at 50°. The residue on the filter weighed about four grammes, and viewed under the microscope, consisted of membranous 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.

The alcoholic solution from which the oleate and other lead salts were precipitated by acetate of lead, was evaporated to dryness, and treated by ether, when another portion of oleic acid was obtained. It results from this that the quantity of oleic acid in the adipocire is small. The greater portion of the lead salt was insoluble in ether and alcohol, its fat was separated and added to the first crop of crystals which fell from the alcoholic solution of the fat from saponification. To ascertain whether any glycerine was in combination with the fatty acids in the adipocire, the aqueous solution from which the crop was precipitated by tartaric acid during the purification of the fat, was heated, filtered from small fat globules, and after removing the tartar deposit, subjected to distillation. The acid residue of the retort was neutralized by carb. potash, and after evaporating on the water bath was exhausted with absolute alcohol, which proved the absence of glycerine, as it gave on evaporating nothing but a small residue of colouring matter, which was yellow, and of a bitter taste.

The distillate in this experiment had a goat-like smell, and it was doubtful whether it reacted acid to litmus paper. Baryta water was added to alkaline reaction, for which but a small quantity was needed, and the solution evaporated. There was but little residue, which, on the addition of a drop of hydrochloric acid and water, emitted a rancid smell, but no oil globule appeared; the volatile fatty acids may, therefore, be considered to be present in the adipocire only in faint traces.