Intelligence and Miscellaneous Articles. 147 



water-bath until the sulphur is seen to be no longer altered and the 

 liquid has assumed a yellow colour; it is then heated to boiling, and 

 kept at this temperature until the sulphuret of ammonium has been 

 expelled and the liquid has again become colourless. The deposited, 

 or excess of, sulphur is now removed by filtration, and the liquid 

 evaporated to crystallization. In this way from 3^ to 3^ oz. of daz- 

 zling white dry sulphocyanide of ammonium are obtained, which may 

 be employed as a reagent, and for the same purposes as the sulpho- 

 cyanide of potassium. Of the 2 oz. of sulphur added, ^ an oz. is 

 left undissolved. 



The behaviour of the higher sulphurets of ammonium towards 

 prussic acid furnishes an admirable test for this acid. A couple of 

 drops of a prussic acid, which has been diluted with so much water 

 that it no longer gives any certain reaction with salts of iron by the 

 formation of prussian blue, when mixed with a drop of sulphuret of 

 ammonium and heated upon a watch-glass until the mixture is be- 

 come colourless, yields a liquid containing sulphocyanide of ammo- 

 nium, which produces with persalts of iron a very deep blood-red 

 colour, and with persalts of copper, in the presence of sulphurous 

 acid, a perceptible white precipitate of the sulphocyanide of copper. 

 — Liebig's Annalen, Jan. 1847. 



ON THE FUSION OF IRIDIUM AND RHODIUM. BY R. HARE. 



This communication respects mainly my success in fusing both 

 iridium and rhodium, neither of which, in a state of purity, had been 

 previously fused. It may be supposed that the globule of iridium, 

 obtained by Children's colossal battery, forms an exception ; but 

 the low specific gravity and porosity of that globule may justify a 

 belief that it was not pure, and at any rate the means employed were 

 of a nature not to be at command for the repetition of the process, 

 so that iridium might as well be infusible, as to be fusible only by 

 such a battery. 



The first specimen of the last-mentioned metal on which I ope- 

 rated was one given me by Mr. Booth, a former pupil of Wohler, 

 whom he had assisted in obtaining it by the excellent process de- 

 vised by that distinguished chemist. This specimen was fused in 

 the presence of Mr. Booth. Subsequently I procured specimens, 

 warranted pure, severally from the house of Pelletier at Paris, and 

 from Messrs. Johnson and Cock, London. Another specimen was 

 given to me by a friend, who had received it as pure, from a source on 

 which reliance may be placed ; and lastly, I obtained myself, by 

 Wohler's process, a specimen of about sixty grains, from the inso- 

 luble residue of platinum ore. All the specimens thus procured 

 were found to be fusible under my hydro-oxygen blowpipe. The 

 specimen obtained from Messrs, Johnson and Cock, after repeated 

 fusions, by which it was much consolidated, weighed sixty-seven 

 grains. During fusion there appeared to be an escape of volatile 

 matter, supposed to be osmic acid, arising from the presence of a 

 minute portion of osmium, between which and iridium an affinity of 



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