ON OXYAMIDOSULPHONATES. 



221 



îor by adding barium hydroxide, and then filtering off barium 

 sulphite before adding silver. 



This decomposition actually furnishes much the most productive 

 •method of preparing hyponitrite yet discovered. The following are 

 the results of some trials we have made, the silver hyponitrite hav- 

 ing been purified by the authors' method (J. Ch. Soc, 45, 81J of 

 dissolution in nitric acid and reprecipitation with sodium carbonate. 

 Generally the silver hyponitrite was directly weighed, but in one or 

 two cases it was converted to chloride for weiu'hino- : 



Digestion of 0.5772 gram of crystals of potassium oxyamido- 

 sulphonate for twenty-four hours with a saturated solution of 

 potassium hydroxide and a bit undissolved, still contained a very 

 small quantity of the sulphonic salt undecomposed. But the 

 yield of hyponitrite came up in this case to 76 %. of the full 

 amount ; 



Boiling 0.9370 gram of crystals with concentrated potas- 

 sium hydroxide for a short time was attended with copious efferves- 

 cence of nitrous oxide, and left still a little undecomposed salt, but 

 the yield of hyponitrite still reached 30 % of the equivalent of the 

 salt taken. 



Merely to prepare hyponitrite from nitrite in this way there is 

 no necessity of getting first a pure oxyamidosulphonate, a well-pre- 

 pared solution of either alkali-salt sufficiently concentrated is quite 

 serviceable if treated with solid potassium hydroxide. Working in 

 this way we found — 



0.4545 gram sodium nitrite,* the final treatment of which, 

 after conversion to the sulphonic salt, was in the cold with the 

 most concentrated potash for twenty-four hours, gave hyponitrite 



* Measured off for analysis as oxyamidosulphonate solution produced from a large quanti- 

 ty of nitrite worked uPon. 



