THE FIRST CHEMISTS.

The article provides part 10 of a chronicle on the first Australian chemists and explores the preparation of picric acid from Xanthorrhoea resin, a natural product that became known as Botany Bay resin, that was published in a paper by Charles Ligar in 1866. Clinical studies on the resin's medicinal properties were reportedly made and later published in a monograph in 1795. The article notes that its treatment with nitric acid produced yellow crystals that later became known as picric acid.