2 : Memoir upon the Asetic Acid. 
bason the saline solution which resulted from it. The salt 
obtained, which he closed up in a flask shut with a ground 
stopper, was of a very fine white colour. 
He used the same precautions in the preparations of the 
acetates of potash and lead. 
He took eight ounces of each of these salts, which he 
introduced separately into strong glass retorts; the retorts ~ 
were placed upon an open fire in a furnace; he adapted to 
each a bell-glass, from which a glass tube issued opening 
into a bell-glass proper for receiving the gases. 
The products were always (as all the world knows) an 
ethereal acidulated fluid mixed with oil. The alkali and the 
carbon remained in the retort, and in the decomposition of 
the acetate of lead nothing of this salt remained except ox- 
idated lead. 
Thus, by the predisposing affinity of the alkalis for car- 
bonic acid, the former determined the decomposition of the 
acetic acid, in order to afford room for the formation of the 
carbonic acid. The oxide of lead, on the contrary, not 
haying so much affinity for carbonic acid, abandoned the 
acetic acid in its greatest purity. | 
The author asks if the metallic base abandons oxygen to 
burn charcoal, or if the power of attraction is less.powerful 
between an oxide and an acid than between an acid and an 
alkali. 
He has made a great number of experiments in order to 
answer this question. 
The gases examined exhaled no ammoniacal smell ; their 
smell was only empyreumatic and penetrating. The liquids 
had the same smell, and all the chemical reagents did not 
ascertain any ammonia there. 
The residues which, according to M. Proust, contain 
some prussiate, were only pure alkaline carbonate or pure 
oxide of lead. 
M. Proust, on examining the residue of the acetate of 
potash, says that it was a residue formed partly of prussiate 
and partly of carbonate of potash. IM. Tromsdorff expected 
to find these two salts ; but upon breaking the retort he only 
found 
, 
