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BETWEEN MURIATIC ACID AND CHLORINE. 349 © 
5. When strongly calcined charcoal was employed, I obtain- 
ed no traces of water at all. It will, moreover, be readily 
‘granted by every chemist, that, from the equivocal nature of 
common charcoal, as prepared with greater or less care, and 
from the uncertainty of expelling the whole gaseous matter, 
and moisture it so greedily imbibes, no important inference 
can be drawn from any results in which it is concerned *. 
The traces of moisture which Dr ‘Murray observed in his 
experiments, must have been the adhering or hygrometric wa- 
‘ter‘of the sal ammoniac. He has indeed assigned some hypo- 
thetical reasons, why sal ammoniac owght not to attract mois- 
ture from the air. I shall confront them with the results of 
experiments 
* If mere heat can separate the combined water of sal ammoniac, then the 
salt, which, after passing through ignited quartz, has concreted on the verge of 
ignition, being nearly anhydrous, will, in an equal weight, contain more acid 
than before transmission. It will in fact bear the same relation to common sal 
ammoniac, that ignited sulphate of soda does to the crystallised salt. Having 
transmitted, in the state of vapour, the salt condensed from the dry gases, 
through ignited quartz, I took 10 gr. of the cake, consolidated just beyond: the 
quartz ; and dissolving them in water, decomposed by nitrate of silver, when I 
obtained 27 gr- of dry muriate of silver, being the quantity precisely equivalent 
to 10 gr. of ordinary muriate of ammonia. (See Wott. Scale of Chem. Equiv.) 
Hence it is evident, that ignited sal ammoniac has undergone no change in its 
constitution. There was obtained one-tenth of a grain of liquid in that experi- 
ment, in which 20 gr. of salt had been passed through the quartz; but this, 
though colourless rock-crystal, betrayed the presence of iron in its composition. 
For, the liquid stained the paper on which it was withdrawn, of a yellow colour; 
and the sublimed salt had, faintly, the same hue. ‘The resulting muriate of sil- 
ver partook, a little, of the brown tinge, of peroxide of iron. I therefore ascrib- 
ed the produetion of liquid to the action of the oxide of iron on the bydepgen of. 
the ammonia, 
