218 E. DIVERS AND T. HAGA 



In presence of potassium- acid- carbonate oxyamidosulphonates 

 react with iodine solution like a hydroxyamine salt only very much 

 more slowly, so that without previous hydrolysis their amount can be 

 titrated in this way though only with difficulty. 



Decomposition of oxyamidosulphonates by alkaline bases. 



The decomposition of oxyamidosulphonates by a solution of 

 potassium hydroxide had apparently been fairly well worked out 

 when we came to give attention to it. Fremy had observed that 

 when heated with excess of this reagent the potassium salt disen- 

 2'ao-ed ammonia, as well as oxvçren of which, as he savs, he had 

 established the absolute purity by analysis. Hence it seemed that 

 oxyamidosulphonates undergo the same decomposition when heated 

 with alkali as when heated with acid. 



Lossen had just discovered hydroxyamine when work upon the 

 sulphazotised bodies was taken up by Clans, and this circumstance 

 led the latter to see in the reaction between potassium hydroxide and 

 Fremy's sulphazidate, as observed by Fremy and by himself, most 

 convincing evidence that the salt is constituted as a sulphonic de- 

 rivative of hydroxyamine, and decomposes with alkali into this base 

 and potassium sulphate. He did not, he admits, succeed indeed in 

 isolating the hydroxyamine or any of its salts, but he found all the 

 sulphur of the sulphazidate converted into sulphate, and just the 

 other bodies and in just the proportions which Lossen had found 

 hvclroxyamine to yield when heated with alkali, namely, ammonia 

 equivalent to between a third and a half of the total nitrogen, and 

 gases which neither extinguished nor rekindled a glowing match, 

 wdiich were, therefore not the pure oxygen of Fremy's finding, and 

 which might well be nitrogen mixed with nitrous oxide, as required 



