rance of
this gas in the putrefaction of animal and vegetable matter, making
the following remarkable and in some respects startling statement:

"I believe it would be found that the compound (carburet of
azote) is the basis of the miasmata which produces malignant,
bilious diseases.... Marsh miasmata are generally the cause
of intermittent fevers. Now under particular circumstances of
action may we not admit the generation of carburet of azote
or cyanogen, and if so, as it readily unites with hydrogen,
may it not be the miasma which produces malignant bilious
fevers, since it is known that hydrocyanic acid is
destructive to animal life and a most virulent poison?...
Miasmata of some kind are the cause of yellow fever. For our
part we believe it to be carburet of azote, or of some of its
combinations, and of these that with hydrogen, from its
deleterious character, seems to be the one."

Another observation made in this connection was that cyanogen is
produced when charcoal is heated with nitric acid. Cutbush stated that
he placed charcoal and nitric acid together in a retort and subjected
them to distillation, collecting the product in Woulfe's bottles,
after which the resulting solutions were impregnated with potash, and

"common sulphate and persulphate of iron introduced. The
colour instantly changed and became more or less blue,
proving the existence of the perferrocyanite of iron and,
consequently, of cyanogen."

Having never met this method of preparing cyanogen, experiments were
made in the writer's laboratory to verify the statement. A blue, or
what had the semblance of a blue color, could be obtained at the point
given by Cutbush, but just as soon as the solution was acidulated, as
is always done, the precipitate disappeared and there was not the
slightest indication that Prussian blue had been formed. Even after
hours of rest there was not a sign of it.

Association on the part of Cutbush with the men of science in
Philadelphia during the first decade of the Nineteenth Century led to
an extension of his interest in science circles, so that during
leisure moments at West Point (1824) he wrote of the following
minerals observed by him in and near that place:

"Molybdenite, kaolin, tremolite, schorl, adularia, garnet,
actinolite, precious serpentine (remarkably elegant), epidote
and diallage."

Recently, attention has been