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.
Its solvent power is also utilized in the production of various colouring fluids, where the colouring matter would not dissolve in water alone; thus aniline violet, the tinctorial constituents of madder, and various allied colouring matters dissolve in glycerin, forming liquids which remain coloured even when diluted with water, the colouring matters being either retained in suspension or dissolved by the glycerin present in the diluted fluid.
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.