94 E. DIVERS AND T. HAGA. 



oxylic union with the sulphur. However, it should be considered that 

 potassium ethylsulphate, for example, shows some of that stability, 

 characteristic of potassium ethylsulphonate towards alkalies, although 

 in it also there is not immediate juxtaposition of ethyl to sulphur. 

 But the special point for consideration is one which structural for- 

 mulae fail to indicate, as in so many other cases. To take the com- 

 monest and simplest example, structural formulae fail to account for 

 the fact that the hydrogen of HOK is so different in its chemical 

 relations from that of HON0 2 . The point, then, is that, because 

 sulphur is bibasic in nitrososulphates as in sulphites and sulphates, 

 potassium nitrososulphate is a salt quite stable towards potassium 

 hydroxide, though extremely unstable towards acids. The sulphur 

 acts, so to speak, through or across the dinitrosyl, upon the potassium 

 just as it acts in sulphates across the intervening oxygen, or as 

 chlorine acts across oxygen as a monobasic radical in chlorates, or 

 phosphorus in phosphates as a tribasic radical. 



That nitrososulphates should decompose into sulphates and 

 nitrous oxide, and also by sodium be reduced to hyponitrites and 

 sulphites, is made very evident by the constitution here given to them. 







Hantzsch's formula for these salts, KON*NSG 3 K, is perhaps 



preferable to ours for accounting for the stability of nitrososulphates 

 towards alkalis. On the other hand, it affords no explanation of their 

 instantaneous decomposition by acids, while their reduction by sodium 



. /OK 



becomes a very complex matter. Raschig's formula, ON'ISK 



0U3IV, 



would be almost equally good, were it not designed to show a possible 

 decomposition into oximidosulphonate and nitrous oxide. 



Traube {Berichte, 27, 1507) thinks there is analogy between his 

 isonitramines and the nitrososulphates, but we doubt very much that 



