The author first adverted to the discovery, nearly about the same time, of paraffine by Reichenbach and of petvoline by Dr Christison. The former occurred among the products of destructive distillation; the latter was found in the Rangoon petroleum, and they were soon found to be identical. Reichenbach's researches on naphtha were then quoted, by which it appears that that indefatigable observer could not discover, in the kind of naphtha which he examined, any trace either of paraffine, or of any other product of destructive distillation. On the contrary, he found that naphtha to possess the characters of oil of turpentine, a product of vegetable life j and he succeeded in obtaining a precisely similar oil from brown coal by distillation at 212°.