indigo-yielding plants, Indigofera anil, anil being derived from the Sanskrit nīla, dark-blue, and nīlā, the indigo plant. About the same time N. N. Zinin found that on reducing nitrobenzene, a base was formed which he named benzidam. A. W. von Hofmann investigated these variously prepared substances, and proved them to be identical, and thenceforth they took their place as one body, under the name aniline or phenylamine. Pure aniline is a basic substance of an oily consistence, colourless, melting at −8° and boiling at 184° C. On exposure to air it absorbs oxygen and resinifies, becoming deep brown in colour; it ignites readily, burning with a large smoky flame. It possesses a somewhat pleasant vinous odour and a burning aromatic taste; it is a highly acrid poison.
Aniline is a weak base and forms salts with the mineral acids. Aniline hydrochloride forms large colourless tables, which become greenish on exposure; it is the “aniline salt” of commerce. The sulphate forms beautiful white plates. Although aniline is but feebly basic, it precipitates zinc, aluminium and ferric salts, and on warming expels ammonia from its salts. Aniline combines directly with alkyl iodides to form secondary and tertiary amines; boiled with carbon disulphide it gives sulphocarbanilide (diphenyl thio-urea), CS(NHC6H5)2, which may be decomposed into phenyl mustard-oil, C6H5CNS, and triphenyl guanidine, C6H5N: C(NHC6H5)2. Sulphuric acid at 180° gives sulphanilic acid, NH2·C6H4·SO3H. Anilides, compounds in which the amino group is substituted by an acid radical, are prepared by heating aniline with certain acids; antifebrin or acetanilide is thus obtained from acetic acid and aniline. The oxidation of aniline has been carefully investigated. In alkaline solution azobenzene results, while arsenic acid produces the violet-colouring matter violaniline. Chromic acid converts it into quinone, while chlorates, in the presence of certain metallic salts (especially of vanadium), give aniline black. Hydrochloric acid and potassium chlorate give chloranil. Potassium permanganate in neutral solution oxidizes it to nitrobenzene, in alkaline solution to azobenzene, ammonia and oxalic acid, in acid solution to aniline black. Hypochlorous acid gives para-amino phenol and para-amino diphenylamine (E. Bamberger, Ber., 1898, 31, p. 1522).
The great commercial value of aniline is due to the readiness with which it yields, directly or indirectly, valuable dyestuffs. The discovery of mauve in 1858 by Sir W. H. Perkin was the first of a series of dyestuffs which are now to be numbered by hundreds. Reference should be made to the articles Dyeing, Fuchsine, Safranine, Indulines, for more details on this subject. In addition to dyestuffs, it is a starting-product for the manufacture of many drugs, such as antipyrine, antifebrin, &c. Aniline is manufactured by reducing nitrobenzene with iron and hydrochloric acid and steam-distilling the product. The purity of the product depends upon the quality of the benzene from which the nitrobenzene was prepared. In commerce three brands of aniline are distinguished—aniline oil for blue, which is pure aniline; aniline oil for red, a mixture of equimolecular quantities of aniline and ortho- and para-toluidines; and aniline oil for safranine, which contains aniline and ortho-toluidine, and is obtained from the distillate (échappés) of the fuchsine fusion. Monomethyl and dimethyl aniline are colourless liquids prepared by heating aniline, aniline hydrochloride and methyl alcohol in an autoclave at 220°. They are of great importance in the colour industry. Monomethyl aniline boils at 193–195°; dimethyl aniline at 192°.
ANIMAL (Lat. animalis, from anima, breath, soul), a term first used as a noun or adjective to denote a living thing, but now used to designate one branch of living things as opposed to the other branch known as plants. Until the discovery of protoplasm, and the series of investigations by which it was established that the cell was a fundamental structure essentially alike in both animals and plants (see Cytology), there was a vague belief that plants, if they could really be regarded as animated creatures, exhibited at the most a lower grade of life. We know now that in so far as life and living matter can be investigated by science, animals and plants cannot be described as being alive in different degrees. Animals and plants are extremely closely related organisms, alike in their fundamental characters, and each grading into organisms which possess some of the characters of both classes or kingdoms (see Protista). The actual boundaries between animals and plants are artificial; they are rather due to the ingenious analysis of the systematist than actually resident in objective nature. The most obvious distinction is that the animal cell-wall is either absent or composed of a nitrogenous material, whereas the plant cell-wall is composed of a carbohydrate material—cellulose. The animal and the plant alike require food to repair waste, to build up new tissue and to provide material which, by chemical change, may liberate the energy which appears in the processes of life. The food is alike in both cases; it consists of water, certain inorganic salts, carbohydrate material and proteid material. Both animals and plants take their water and inorganic salts directly as such. The animal cell can absorb its carbohydrate and proteid food only in the form of carbohydrate and proteid; it is dependent, in fact, on the pre-existence of these organic substances, themselves the products of living matter, and in this respect the animal is essentially a parasite on existing animal and plant life. The plant, on the other hand, if it be a green plant, containing chlorophyll, is capable, in the presence of light, of building up both, carbohydrate material and proteid material from inorganic salts; if it be a fungus, devoid of chlorophyll, whilst it is dependent on pre-existing carbohydrate material and is capable of absorbing, like an animal, proteid material as such, it is able to build up its proteid food from material chemically simpler than proteid. On these basal differences are founded most of the characters which make the higher forms of animal and plant life so different. The animal body, if it be composed of many cells, follows a different architectural plan; the compact nature of its food, and the yielding nature of its cell-walls, result in a form of structure consisting essentially of tubular or spherical masses of cells arranged concentrically round the food-cavity. The relatively rigid nature of the plant cell-wall, and the attenuated inorganic food-supply of plants, make possible and necessary a form of growth in which the greatest surface is exposed to the exterior, and thus the plant body is composed of flattened laminae and elongated branching growths. The distinctions between animals and plants are in fact obviously secondary and adaptive, and point clearly towards the conception of a common origin for the two forms of life, a conception which is made still more probable by the existence of many low forms in which the primary differences between animals and plants fade out.
An animal may be defined as a living organism, the protoplasm of which does not secrete a cellulose cell-wall, and which requires for its existence proteid material obtained from the living or dead bodies of existing plants or animals. The common use of the word animal as the equivalent of mammal, as opposed to bird or reptile or fish, is erroneous.
The classification of the animal kingdom is dealt with in the article Zoology. (P. C. M.)
ANIMAL HEAT. Under this heading is discussed the physiology of the temperature of the animal body.
The higher animals have within their bodies certain sources of heat, and also some mechanism by means of which both the production and loss of heat can be regulated. This is conclusively shown by the fact that both in summer and winter their mean temperature remains the same. But it was not until the introduction of thermometers that any exact data on the temperature of animals could be obtained. It was then found that local differences were present, since heat production and heat loss vary considerably in different parts of the body, although the circulation of the blood tends to bring about a mean temperature of the internal parts. Hence it is important to determine the temperature of those parts which most nearly approaches to that of the internal organs. Also for such results to be comparable they must be made in the same situation. The rectum gives most accurately the temperature of internal parts, or in women and some animals the vagina, uterus or bladder.
