,166 Notice of a Ji/Teteoric Stone, [Sept. 



its characters with the subsalts which the same oxidated basis 

 fprms with the oxygen acids. The acid salts may be regarded 

 as double combinations of the radical of the acid with two comr 

 bustible bodies, for example, ferroprussic acid is a double cya» 

 nuret of irou and hydrogen : the subsalts again may be regarded 

 as double combinations of the radical of the base with oxygep 

 and with the radical of the acid ; for example, the substance 

 styled subprussiate of mercury is a combination of cyanuret of 

 mercury with oxide of mercury. The existence of these subsajts 

 appears to me to furnish the strongest argument which, in the 

 present state of our knowledge, can be advanced in favour of 

 Pttlong's theory respecting the constitution of salts. 



From what I have now stated it is obvious that none of the 

 compounds which have hitherto been styled prussiates, contain 

 either prussic acid or an oxidated basis, but that they consist 

 of cyanogen and the radical of the base : we call them, there* 

 fore, cyanurets, or sometimes metallic cyanurets {cyauurer eller 

 cyamnetaller). This view enables us to explain why a solution 

 of the cyanuret of potassium possesses such little permanency, 

 and why its taste participates simultaneously both of potash and 

 of prussic aqid. All substai^ces which have any tendency to 

 combine with potash, as, for example, the carbonic acid of the 

 atmosphere, the constituents of saliva, &,c. determine the form- 

 ation of that alkali by oxidation at tlie expence of water, and 

 prussic acid is at the same instant disengaged. 



Neither does there exist a class of salts corresponding with 

 the name of sulphoprussiates, because here also, as we have 

 already seen, the acid is decomposed by the bases, and com- 

 pounds are formed, which for the present may be styled sulpho* 

 cyanurets and cyauosulphurets, the latter appellation beuig 

 reserved exclusively for those compounds which contain cyano- 

 gen united to the larger proportion of sulphur. 



Articlij IV. 



^ptice of a Meteoric Stone which fell at 'Nanjemoy, in Maryland^ 

 . North America, on Feb, 10, 1825. By Dr. Samuel D. Carver. 

 In a Letter to Professor Silliman.* 



I TAKE the liberty of forwarding you a notice of a meteoric 

 stone which fell in this town on the morning of Thursday, 

 Feb. 10, 1825. The sky was rather hazy, and the wind south- 

 west. At about noon the people of the town and of the adjacent 

 country were alarmed by an explosion of some body in the air, 

 which was succeeded by a loud whizzing noise, like that of air 



• From the American Journal of Science for June, 182i% 



