gg É. DIVERS AXT) T. HAGA. 



pay no consideration to the fact that normal salts are known and that 

 the barium salt is one of them and the lead salt another, though in 

 this the lead is half as hydr<3xide. It seemed of interest to examine 

 the precipitation by barium chloride quantitatively. Adding this salt 

 in moderate excess to a solution of the pentapotassium salt, the propor- 

 tion of oximidosulphonic radical precipitated was found to be eight- 

 nineteenths of the whole, a result which, after allowing for the solu- 

 bility of bai'ium oximidosulphonate, may be accepted as jjroof that the 

 pentapotassium salt had acted as tripotassium salt united with in- 

 different dipotassium salt. 



One thing more is to be pointed out in sup))ort of the double-salt 

 character of the pentapotassium oximidosulphonate. Although this salt 

 so readily and frequently crystallises from solution as to have become 

 the best known of the three potassium salts, matters are quite otherwise 

 with the sodium salts among which the pentasodium salt cannot even 

 be prepared ;it all ; the salt intermediate to the normal sodium and the 

 disodiinu salts which can be formed is troublesome to get ; and the 

 normal salt itself is that which readily crystallises nut from a suffi- 

 ciently alkaline solution. 



There is a strikingly characteristic test for these salts in common, 

 from which it may be assumed tbat they have a common constitution, 

 lîoth neutral and alkaline oximidosulphonates, and no other salts, 

 yield in solution, at once and in the cold, an intensely coloured salt 

 when gently oxidised in the absence of acids, the reaction being one of 

 the most remarkal)le in the domain of inorganic chemistry (p. 4(5). 

 This reaction was described l)y Fremy and his accuracy fully confirm- 

 ed by Raschig. 



Failing entirely to convert Fremy's two potassium sulphazotates 

 into each other, or believing that he had failed, Claus held them to be 

 salts of distinct acids and gave them the distinctive formula — 



