Having occasion at one time to require a quantity of methylamine, I tried a number of the best methods given in text-books and books of reference, but the smallness of the yield and the great trouble involved in the processes drew my attention to the fact that there was room for a good method of preparing the primary monamines. Hofman's method, viz., heating the iodides of the alcoholic radicals with ammonia, is of little use, as the trouble of separating the diamines and triamines formed at the same time is so great as to make the process practically useless if the primary monamines alone are required.

Keeping this fact before me, I tried for some years, in the intervals of more systematic work, to find the solution of this problem, and I think I have now found a process which, at the same time simple and inexpensive, gives a large yield of the primary monamines. This result has not been arrived at without several failures, and as I think that even negative results are often useful, I shall briefly refer to them. In the first place, together with Professor E. A. Letts, I tried to obtain methylamine from oxamate of methyl. As oxamate of methyl has the following constitutional formula, viz.—