422 KC@NE ON THE NATURE OF AQUA REGIA, 
stances attending its formation, the property possessed by phos- 
phorous acid of resisting the oxidizing action of nitrous acid*, 
the formation of nitrous acid by the action of hydrochloric acid 
upon nitric and hyponitric acids, that of the hyponitric acid by 
the action of nitric oxide upon an excess of nitric acid, the cir- 
cumstances attending the formation of the nitrite of the oxide of 
ethyle, and the influence of heat on the alkaline nitrates,—all these 
facts are irreconcileable with the hypothesis of M. Millon; and 
the most important observations made by the author himself, 
prove most evidently that of all the oxides of nitrogen the hypo- 
nitric acid is the most powerful oxidizing agentt. 
Were it otherwise, if the hyponitric acid were a less powerful 
oxidizing agent than nitrous acid, there would be an anomaly in 
the oxidizing properties of these oxides, which constitute the 
more powerful oxidizing agent the more oxygen they contain. 
Thus nitric oxide, which is converted in the presence of iron, 
zinc, or phosphuretted hydrogen into protoxide of nitrogen, re- 
sists the deoxidizing action of copper. Nitrous acid, which 
yields a third of its oxygen to copper, undergoes no change in 
the presence of phosphorous and hydrochloric acids, although 
both convert the hyponitric into nitrous acid. With respect to 
nitric acid, it would without doubt be a far more powerful oxi- 
dizing agent than the hyponitric acid if it could exist per se. 
On the part which Hyponitric Acid acts towards Organic 
Substances. 
22, The property of hyponitric acid, of raising most bodies to 
their highest degree of oxidation, is owing to its little stability. 
This is also one of the causes which deprives it of one of the 
most essential characters of acids; it has no other function than 
that of oxidizing, for it cannot combine with chlorine under 
whatever circumstances these two bodies may be placed, whether 
brought together, in statu nascente, in the presence or absence 
of water ; at a moderate or low temperature, even in the presence 
of a powerful base t, chlorine is instantly disengaged, as the ac- 
* Berzelius’s Jahresbericht, 1841, p. 31. 
+ The nitric acid considered in the state NO*+ aq. 
{ For instance, when hydrochloric acid is passed over nitve. When this salt 
is perfectly dry, no effect is produced at the ordinary temperature ; but if it be 
gently warmed, or the nitre is not perfectly dry chlorine, water and nitrous va- 
pours are formed, products which arise frum the influence of the water on these 
vapours, and there remains chloride of potassium. 
