When heated with aniline it yields phenol and acetanilide.
It has an increasing trade in iron, timber, coal and agricultural products, a trade which is fostered by a harbour opened in 1897; and also large factories for making aniline dyes and soda.
Moreover, while methylamine, dimethylamine, and trimethylamine increase in basicity corresponding to the introduction of successive methyl groups, phenylamine or aniline, diphenylamine, and triphenylamine are in decreasing order of basicity, the salts of diphenylamine being decomposed by water.
Substitution of the Benzene Ring.-As a general rule, homologues and mono-derivatives of benzene react more readily with substituting agents than the parent hydrocarbon; for example, phenol is converted into tribromphenol by the action of bromine water, and into the nitrophenols by dilute nitric acid; similar activity characterizes aniline.
This theory explains the fluorescence of anthranilic acid (o-aminobenzoic acid), by regarding the aniline residue as the luminophore, and the carboxyl group as the fluorogen, since, apparently, the introduction of the latter into the non-fluorescent aniline molecule involves the production of a fluorescent substance.