30O • Progress of Foreign Science. 



unites gradually at the surface of the water, and ends some- 

 times in falling down, and collecting' at the bottom, in a drop 

 more or less bulky. The vessels have then a very peculiar 

 odour, approaching much to that of essence of turpentine. 



M. Serullas at first imagined, that these two sub- 

 stances might be the chlorides of carbon discovered by Mr. 

 Faraday ; but he has not been able to recognise either 

 of the properties by which Mr. Faraday distinguishes them, 

 nor are those which characterize the peculiar matters, similar to 

 those of the species of chloride of carbon, which may be obtained 

 from the action of chlorine on alcohol. It is difficult, however, 

 to believe that there is not an identity of composition between 

 these products; which will be, no doubt, modified by circum- 

 stances which he has not been able to appreciate. 



To make the experiment of transforming the hydriodide of 

 carbon into the chloride of iodine, we fill a phial, having a 

 ground stopper, with chlorine dried over chloride of calcium, 

 and throwing into it some hydriodide in powder, immediately 

 shut the phial ; the action is speedy. There is a developement of 

 heat and a brisk effervescence due, he thinks, to the disengage- 

 ment of muriatic acid gas, which is formed. We see the liquid 

 red sub-chloride which also is formed at the same time, succes- 

 sively pass, by the absorption of chlorine, into a solid yellow 

 chloride. It is possible, by heating carefully the stoppered 

 bottle, to make the chloride pass alternately from the solid 

 state, to the state of a liquid sub-chloride, which, on cooling, 

 returns to its primitive state by resuming the chlorine which the 

 heat had separated with effervescence. M. Serullas has even em- 

 ployed this means to volatilize the chloride, from one side of the 

 bottles to the other, across the residuary chlorine, in order to be 

 sure of the complete decomposition of the hydriodide. When 

 we project hydriodide of carbon into flasks filled with chlorine, 

 we hear each time a slight noise, similar to that produced by the 

 immersion of a red-hot iron rod in water. 



4. If the chlorine employed in these experiments is still 

 charged with the usual humidity which it has in coming directly 

 into the bottles without previous drying, the hydriodide of carbon 

 which we introduce equally gives rise to chloride of iodine, and 

 muriatic acid, but we have no longer the white matter. There is 

 formed in its place chloroxycarbonic gas (phosgene gas) which 

 we can insulate by inverting the bottles first over a mercurial 

 bath, to make the excess of chlorine be absorbed with agitation ; 

 then in water, in order to dissolve the muriatic acid. The 

 phosgene gas can remain a sufficiently long time in contact with 

 water without being decomposed, so as to be examined and 

 recognised. This ciicumstance of the humidity of the chlorine, to 

 which M. Serullas had not paid attention in his first experiments, 

 hindered him, for some time, from recognising under what form 



