haunts my memory, after I have hardened myself
successfully against him— if people really do
consider it an injustice to the poor, to give to this
particular institution, let them leave it to its
fate; but I think it is somewhat hard that they
should turn the whole scheme into ridicule, or
assail it with open ferocity as a dangerous
competitor, with other enterprises for public favour.
I should be slow to believe that the five shillings
which is sent to the Holloway asylum, is taken
away from the poor, or that for the want of it
some deserving mechanic, with his wife and
family, will actually "go to the dogs." At all
events, and whether the sentiment be
wholesome or morbid, it is worthy of record that such
a place exists; an extraordinary monument of
the remarkable affection with which English
people regard the race of dogs; an evidence of
that hidden fund of feeling which survives in
some hearts even the rough ordeal of London
life in the nineteenth century.

SUGAR AND MILK.

An alchemist in a picture is an old and stupid-
looking creature. Nevertheless, the alchemists
were really the fast men of science, fast because
they were young. As chemists got experience
they learnt better to understand how high they
might carry their heads; they found that they
could only take to pieces when they dealt with
living material. The alchemists sought not only
to construct, but to fathom the secret means by
which Nature worked in forming her productions;
they had faith in a creative chemistry. Modern
chemistry has, on the other hand, been content
to derive all her great powers from the
decomposition of things. Nevertheless, something has
been done lately in the way of building an
organic product, with how much difficulty and
at what cost let us attempt to suggest. An
organic product that the chemist has learnt one
way of making is grape-sugar. He cannot make
much of it, and what he makes costs him a good
deal more than its weight in gold; still he can
really make sugar, nearly as good as the brown
sugar we put into puddings, at the cost of
something like a hundred-pound note for the
spoonful.

Vinegar, too, has been artificially made from
its elements, by Dr. Kolbe, who used a most
complicated and difficult process, and achieved
his triumphs at a cost that, if we were dependent
on this source alone for our vinegar, would
enable any man to ruin himself by eating pickles.
Berthelot, after enormous labour, succeeded by
a general method of his own discovery in forming
an immense number of organic substances, the
most important of which were the alcohols,
among which ordinary alcohol, or spirit of wine,
is the best known. And he it was who showed
how to make grape-sugar by the help of another
process, discovered by Wurtz, and, by a slight
evasion of the strict conditions of the problem,
how to build from the elements without using
any vital action.

This is the way to do it. Take the metal
calcium (which is of a beautiful yellow colour)
burn it in oxygen, and produce lime. Take
carbon, which by burning in oxygen produces
carbonic acid. By uniting the two we get
carbonate of lime, or chalk. This, when heated to
redness with iron filings, produces oxide of
carbon, the gas which we see burning with a blue
flame on the top of a well-burnt fire. This gas
is passed into flasks containing a solution of
potash, also built up from its elements of
potassium, hydrogen, and oxygen. The flasks are
carefully sealed, and kept at boiling temperature
in a water-bath for three weeks, at the end
of which time the gas is all absorbed, and
formiate of potash is produced, formic acid
being itself an organic product found naturally
in the bodies of nearly all kinds of ants. It is
the acid liquid they spirt out when irritated.
The solution of formiate of potash distilled with
sulphuric acid (which can easily be made from
its elements) and the formic acid resulting, is
passed into a solution of baryta. The formiate
of baryta thus formed is heated to redness, and
the resulting gas (which is principally marsh
gas, being the gas which bubbles to the top of
the water when the mud in stagnant ponds is
stirred, and which, therefore, is also an organic
product) is passed, together with some more
oxide of carbon, through tubes heated to redness,
and then into the liquid element called bromine.
The resulting substance, called bromide of
propylene, is dissolved, together with acetate of
silver, in fused crystalline acetic acid, and
digested a week in a sealed flask, at a temperature
of boiling water, by which means a kind of
oil is produced, which, by proper treatment, is
separated, and after treatment with baryta water,
yields glycerine. Now glycerine, though not
itself a food, strictly speaking, yet forms part of
a food, for it is an invariable constituent of fats
and oils. So we have almost attained the
desired end, namely, of building a food out of its
elements. But now comes the weak part of the
process; for, in order to change the glycerine
into sugar— i.e. into a vital food we are
compelled to employ the assistance of vitality, in
the shape of decaying animal membrane, which
has the inscrutable property of causing by its
presence (and by its presence only) a kind of
fermentation which transforms the glycerine
into grape-sugar, and it is thus that the aliment
is artificially produced.

These are the greatest results at present
obtained, and though of no practical use on account
of the almost fabulous cost of each grain of the
product of such a process, yet they are of the
greatest interest, not so much in showing the
wonderful possibilities that may arise in the
future, as for the evidence they give of the
marvellous powers that lie hidden in that
intangible and incomprehensible principle of life,
which, even with what it has once inhabited and
quitted, can produce effects which at present lie
beyond our utmost reach of knowledge.

There is a class of changes in the products of
the animal and plant world of which vitality in
another form seems to be the great cause.