156 Intelligence and Miscellaneous Articles. 



l ir> 



immediately," he observes, " the compound obtained by Serullas. 

 But Serullas, to whom we are indebted for a great many interesting 

 experiments on this compound, says, that there is formed simultane- 

 ously, iodate of soda, iodide of sodium, and hydriodide of carbon j but 

 I have not found the slightest trace of iodate of soda. On decom- 

 posing the substance obtained by Serullas by means of copper, iron, 

 and mercury, I obtained no hydrogen, nor any other kind of gas, but 

 only a combination of iodine and carbon. We should therefore con- 

 sider this substance as a compound of carbon and iodine formed in 

 the following manner : — When the two alcoholic solutions are mixed, 

 the iodine combines with the sodium -, and the oxygen set free, unites 

 to the hydrogen of the alcohol to form water ; whilst the carbon of 

 the alcohol (the latter being considered as a compound of water and 

 olefiant gas) combines with another portion of the iodine to produce 

 the iodide of carbon. 



" This iodide of carbon, distilled with corrosive sublimate, yields a 

 liquid analogous to that which Serullas obtained by employing dry 

 chloride of phosphorus. It is also a compound of carbon and iodine ; 

 so that we now know two combinations of iodine and carbon, and 

 one with carburetted hydrogen, discovered by Faraday, which is dis- 

 tinguished from the two others by its chemical properties and crystal- 

 line form." 



The experiments of M. Mitscherlich, by showing the true nature 

 of M. Serullas' compound, remove the difficulty of supposing that 

 two hydriodides of carbon could exist of exactly the same composition, 

 but different in properties. 



Ann. de Chun, xxxvii. p. 85. Roy. Inst. Journal, July 1828. 



SOLAR SPOTS. 



The large solar spot, whose appearance we described under our 

 last monthly meteorological report, came round on the sun's 

 eastern limb in the night of the 12th instant, as we supposed it 

 would, and was well-defined by the 14«th, when the nucleus had 

 assumed the shape of a pear: on the 17th it was bell-shaped, and 

 on the 19th, when nearest to the sun's centre, the umbra and nucleus 

 were nearly circular, with a few indentations on the edge of the lat- 

 ter, and but little apparent diminution in the size of either since the 

 27th of May. At 7 a.m. on the 23rd it was, as nearly as could be 

 ascertained from a drawing, in the same position on the sun's disc 

 as on the 27th ultimo ; and on the 25th at sunset it was very near 

 his lower limb in a very contracted state, resembling a line without 

 any perceptible umbra, and went off on his posterior side again in 

 the night, making a complete revolution in both cases in 27 days, 

 and thus travelling, when the necessary correction is made for the 

 earth's annual motion in the ecliptic during the period of its revo- 

 lution, at the rate of 1454? miles per hour, which is to the velocity 

 of a point on the earth's equator as 7 to 5 nearly. Early in the 

 morning of the 19lh, this spot was within 9 degrees of the sun's 

 equator, or its declination was 9 degrees North. Its largest dia- 

 meter, from a mean of several admeasurements, was 1£ diameter of 



the 



