212 NON-EXISTENCE OF AMIDQSELENITES. 



employing this method. Instead, they tried Kjeldahl's nitrogen 

 process, which they found to give excellent results with one 

 selenosamate but to be unsuitable for use in the analysis of the 

 other. They offer no explanation of this remarkable difference, 

 and we have to rely, without evidence, on the accuracy of the 

 process in one case, though in the other iudistinguishably similar 

 case it is found to be unsuitable. After failing also in the use 

 of the soda-lime process to determine the ammonia in the acid 

 selenosamate, success was at last gained by using Dumas' 

 nitrogen method. The chloroplatinate method was tried with 

 both salts and gave indefinite results. It is certain that Cameron 

 and Macallan, in some of their analyses of the acid selenosamate, 

 got quantities of ammonia much below what they expected, thus 

 favouring the supposition that this salt may have been the 

 three-fourths-acid selenite. However that may be, we hold 

 ourselves justified in asserting that there has not yet been given 

 any reliable evidence that selenion dioxide and ammonia in 

 presence of alcohol or water give any other compounds than 

 selenites. It may, therefore, be said of selenion dioxide that, 

 unlike sulphur dioxide, it forms only oxylic salts, whether with 

 alkyl radicals, with amines, or w^ith metals. 



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