The process of Dennstedt for the elementary analysis of organic compounds by combustion in oxygen with the help of platinised quartz was tried in this laboratory, and in expert hands was found to be both rapid and accurate. The average student, however, experienced great difficulty in the conduct of the combustion, and it occurred to us that the advantages of the apparatus of Dennstedt, so carefully worked out by him in detail, might be applied to the ordinary method of combustion by means of copper oxide.

If one inspects a tube in which a copper oxide combustion is being conducted, it is found that the oxide actually reduced to metallic copper, after the combustion of the volatile matter is completed, rarely extends for more than an inch or two along the tube, unless the process has been accidentally “rushed.”