DECOMPOSITION OF SULPHUR. 267 



substances, must be employed as an auxiliary, and not as 

 an immediate agent. 



The decomposition of sulphur, which constitutes the Decomposition, 

 « ,. .,. * , , m ai c ,, of sulphur, as 



object of this paper, will furnish au a])phcation of the of other bodies, 



principle I have just laid down. However, before we at. {J™^^* 

 tempt the decomposition of a substance, it is requisite, to 

 have some notion of its composition, that may indicate the 

 nature of the experiments to be made. With respect to 

 sulphur for instance, I had observed, that sulphuric acid 

 strongly saturated with nitrous gas gave a blue colour to 

 water acidulated with it. From the appearance of this 

 colour I inferred, that carbon must be one of the component 

 parts of sulphur: and then considering the property this 

 substance has to dissolve in oils, I suspected, that sulphur 

 might be a compound of carbon and hidrogen. These con- 

 jectures were very far from a demonstration; but from 

 these I could proceed as data, either to attack the princi- 

 ples themselves, or to combine them with a third principle, 

 which by its union with them would form a compound al- 

 ready known. 



Nitrogen, for example, appeared to me well adapted Nitrogen 

 to give rise to the compound I should wish to obtain, if 

 hidrogen and carbon were component parts of sulphur. 



In fact, from a combination of these two principles with should produce 

 v . . with it some- 



nitrogen must not a compound be produced analogous to t ^ m(T i^g t h e 



the prussic radical? and would not this product, the ele- prussic radical, 

 meats of which are known, indicate those of sulphur? 



To verify how far my conjectures were well founded, I ^ve^thiT 1 *° 

 made the following experiment. 



I subjected to calcination in an iron tube four parts °^ c ^|™nd < suu" 

 animal charcoal with two parts of sulphate of potash, the phate of potash 

 whole being intimately mixed. I heated this mixture to a me ' 

 cherry red, and having suffered it to cool to three fourths, 

 I threw it into a large quantity of water. and lixiviated. 



When I had filtered the liquor, it was of a green colour, The hxivium 

 inclining to blue according to the light in which it was 

 viewed. It had but a slight smetf of hidrosulphuret. Its 

 taste, though different from that of the prussic radical, pro- 

 duced on the palate a sensation resembling that; by which 

 this radical is characterised, 



I tried 



