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 Durability and Weight of Furs for Rugs and Foot-sacks.

Wolverine, the strongest fur suited for rugs and foot-sacks, is taken as the standard.

For a rug about 20 to 25 sq. ft. of fur are needed, for a foot-sack 14.

FURAZANES (furo—a.a′—diazoles), organic compounds obtained by heating the glyoximes (dioximes of ortho-diketones) with alkalis or ammonia. Dimethylfurazane is prepared by heating dimethylglyoxime with excess of ammonia for six hours at 165° C. (L. Wolff, Ber., 1895, 28, p. 70). It is a liquid (at ordinary temperature) which boils at 156° C. (744 mm.). Potassium permanganate oxidizes it first to methylfurazane-carboxylic acid and then to furazanedicarboxylic acid. Methyl-ethylfurazane and diphenylfurazane are also known. By warming oxyfurazane acetic acid with excess of potassium permanganate to 100° C. oxyfurazanecarboxylic acid is obtained (A. Hantzsch and J. Urbahn, Ber., 1895, 28, p. 764). It crystallizes in prisms, which melt at 175° C. Furazanecarboxylic acid is prepared by the action of a large excess of potassium permanganate on a hot solution of furazanepropionic acid. It melts at 107° C, and dissolves in caustic soda, with a deep yellow colour and formation of nitrosocyanacetic acid (L. Wolff and P. F. Ganz, Ber., 1891, 24, p. 1167). Furoxane is an oxide of furazane, considered by H. Wieland to be identical with glyoxime peroxide; Kekulés dibromnitroacetonitrile is dibromfuroxane.

The formulae of the compounds above mentioned are:

FURETIÈRE, ANTOINE (1619–1688), French scholar and miscellaneous writer, was born in Paris on the 28th of December 1619. He first studied law, and practised for a time as an advocate, but eventually took orders and after various preferments became abbé of Chalivoy in the diocese of Bourges in 1662. In his leisure moments he devoted himself to letters, and in virtue of his satires—Nouvelle Allégorique, ou histoire des derniers troubles arrivés au royaume d’éloquence (1658); Voyage de Mercure (1653)—he was admitted a member of the French Academy in 1662. That learned body had long promised a complete dictionary of the French tongue; and when they heard that Furetière was on the point of issuing a work of a similar nature, they interfered, alleging that he had purloined from their stores, and that they possessed the exclusive privilege of publishing such a book. After much bitter recrimination on both sides the offender was expelled in 1685; but for this act of injustice he took a severe revenge in his satire, Couches de l’académie (Amsterdam, 1687). His Dictionnaire universel was posthumously published in 1690 (Rotterdam, 2 vols.). It was afterwards revised and improved by the Protestant jurist, Henri Basnage de Beauval (1656–1710), who published his edition (3 vols.) in 1701; and it was only superseded by the compilation known as the Dictionnaire de Trévoux (Paris, 3 vols., 1704; 7th ed., 8 vols., 1771), which was in fact little more than a reimpression of Basnage’s edition. Furetière is perhaps even better known as the author of Le Roman bourgeois (1666). It cast ridicule on the fashionable romances of Mlle de Scudéry and of La Calprenède, and is of interest as descriptive of the everyday life of his times. There is no element of burlesque, as in Scarron’s Roman comique, but the author contents himself with stringing together a number of episodes and portraits, obviously drawn from life, without much attempt at sequence. The book was edited in 1854 by Edward Fournier and Charles Asselineau and by P. Jannet.

The Fureteriana, which appeared in Paris eight years after Furetière’s death, which took place on the 14th of May 1688, is a collection of but little value.

FURFOOZ, a village some 10 m. from Dinant in the Ardennes, Belgium. Three caves containing prehistoric remains were here excavated in 1872. Of these the Trou de Frontal is the most famous. In it were found human skeletons with brachycephalic skulls, associated with animal bones, those of the reindeer being particularly plentiful. Among the skeletons was discovered an oval vase of pottery. The Furfooz type of mankind is believed to date from the close of the Quaternary age. G. de Mortillet dates the type in the Robenhausen epoch of the Neolithic period. His theory is that the bones are those of men of that period buried in what had been a cave-dwelling of the Madelenian epoch.

 FURFURANE, or, C4H4O, a colourless liquid boiling at 32° C., found in the distillation products of pine wood. It was first synthetically prepared by H. Limpricht (Ann., 1873, 165, p. 281) by distilling barium mucate with soda lime, pyromucic acid C4H3O·CO2H being formed, which, on further loss of carbon dioxide, yielded furfurane. A. Henniger (Ann. chim. phys., 1886 [2], 7, p. 220), by distilling erthyrite with formic acid, obtained a dihydrofurfurane

C4H6(OH)4 + 2H2CO2 = C4H6O + CO + CO2 + 4H2O,

which, on treatment with phosphorus pentachloride, yielded furfurane. Furfurane is insoluble in water and possesses a characteristic smell. It does not react with sodium or with phenylhydrazine, but yields dye-stuffs with isatin and phenanthrenequinone. It reacts violently with hydrochloric acid, producing a brown amorphous substance. Methyl and phenyl derivatives have been prepared by C. Paal (Ber., 1884, 17, p. 915). Paal prepared acetonyl acetophenone by condensing sodium acetoacetate with phenacylbromide, and this substance on dehydration yields ′-phenylmethylfurfurane, the acetonyl acetophenone probably reacting in the tautomeric “enolic” form,

This ester readily hydrolyses, and the acid formed yields acetonyl acetophenone (by loss of carbon dioxide), which then on dehydration yields the furfurane derivative, thus

L. Knorr (Ber., 1889, 22, p. 158) obtained diacetosuccinic ester by condensing sodium acetoacetate with iodine, and by dehydrating the ester he prepared ′-dimethylfurfurane ′-dicarboxylic acid (carbopyrotritaric acid), which on distillation yields ′-dimethylfurfurane as a liquid boiling at 94° C. Paal also obtained this compound by using monochloracetone in the place of phenacylbromide. By the distillation of mucic acid or isosaccharic acid, furfurane--carboxylic acid (pyromucic acid), C4H3O·CO2H, is obtained; it crystallizes in needles or leaflets, and melts at 134° C.

Furfurol (furol), C4H3O·CHO, is the aldehyde of pyromucic acid, and is formed on distilling bran, sugar, wood and most carbohydrates with dilute sulphuric acid, or by distilling the pentoses with hydrochloric acid. It is a colourless liquid which boils at 162° C., and is moderately soluble in water; it turns brown on exposure to air and has a characteristic aromatic smell. It shows all the usual properties of an aldehyde, forming a bisulphite compound, an oxime and a hydrazone; whilst it can be reduced to the corresponding furfuryl alcohol by means of sodium amalgam, and oxidized to pyromucic acid by means of silver oxide. It also shows all the condensation reactions of (q.v.); condensing with aldehydes and ketones in the presence of caustic soda to form more complex aldehydes and ketones with unsaturated side chains,