Hop-bitter acid appears to possess the character of an aldehyde and of a weak acid; for the present I am not in a position to state its constitution more clearly. Most of the oxidizing processes have an energetic effect on it, forming also considerable quantities of valerianic acid.
The question as to whether the hop owes chiefly to this acid and its resinous modifications the property of imparting a pronounced bitter flavor to a solution, I must for the present leave unanswered. The acid and its isomer are both insoluble in water; they are, on the other hand, very readily dissolved in hop oil; they also furnish a tolerably bitter solution, if boiled for a long time in water, probably on their account of their gradual decomposition. I will not for the present go further into the subject, as I hope soon to be in a position to give more definite information.
This vicarage, for the Rev. Frank Jones, has recently been completed from the designs of Mr. E.W. Mountford, A.R.I.B.A.; of 22 Buckingham Street, Strand, W. C., and Mr. H. D. Appleton, A.R.I.B.A., of the Wool Exchange, Coleman Street, E. C., who were the joint architects. The builder was Mr. William Robinson, of Lower Tooting, S. W. The walls are of yellow stock bricks, with red brick arches, quoins, etc., the gables being hung with Kentish tiles and the roofs covered with Broseley tiles. The internal joinery is of pitch pine.
[Illustration: ST. PAUL'S VICARAGE, FOREST HILL.--VIEW FROM ROAD.]
[Illustration: ST. PAUL'S VICARAGE, FOREST HILL.--VIEW FROM GARDEN.]
The illustrations are from drawings by Mr. J. Stonier.--_The Architect_.
SOME ECONOMICAL PROCESSES CONNECTED WITH THE CLOTHWORKING INDUSTRY.
[Footnote: Read before the Society of Arts, London, May, 1884.]
By Dr. WILLIAM RAMSAY, Professor of Chemistry at University College, Bristol.
In this present age of scientific and technical activity, there is one branch which has, I think, been the subject of an article in the _Quarterly Journal of Science_. It is one which deserves attention. It was there termed "The Investigation of Residual Phenomena," and I can conceive no better title to express the idea. The investigator who first explores an unknown region is content if he can in some measure delineate its grand features--its rivers, its mountain chains, its plains; if he be a geologist, he attempts no more than broadly to observe its most important rock formations; if a botanist, its more striking forms of vegetation. So with the scientific investigator. The chemist or physicist who discovers a new law seldom succeeds in doing more than testing its general accuracy by experiments; it is reserved for his successors to note the divergence between his broad and sweeping generalization and particular instances which do not quite accord with it. So it was with Boyle's law that the volume of a gas varies in inverse ratio to the pressure to which it is exposed; so it is with the Darwinian theory, inasmuch as deterioration and degeneration play a part which was, perhaps, at first overlooked; and similar instances may be found in almost all pure sciences.