322 Further Observations 
operated on it in very small quantities, to suppose it readily 
rendered solid by cooling ; but I find in experimenting upon 
it, ont of the contact of water, that it is not frozen by ex- 
posure to a mixture of ice and muriate of lime. 
The compound gradually disappears in water, producing 
azote, and the water becomes acid, and has the taste and 
smell of a weak solution of nitro-muriatic acid. 
The compound, when introduced into concentrated solu- 
tion of muriatic acid, quickly resolves itself into gas, pro- 
ducing much more than its own weight of elastic fluid, 
which proves to be pure chlorine, and the solution evapo- 
rated affords muriate of ammonia. 
In concentrated nitric acid it afforded azote. 
In diluted sulphuric acid it yielded a mixture of azote 
and oxygen. 
It detonated in strong solutions of ammonia. In weak 
solutions it produced azote. 
It united to or dissolved in sulphurane, phosphorane, and 
alcohol of sulphur, without any violence of action, and dis- 
solved in moderately strong solution of fluoric acid, giving 
it the power of acting upon silver. 
When it was exposed to pure mercury, out of the contact 
of water, a white powder and azote were the results. 
The first attempt that I made to determine the composi- 
tion of the detonating substance, after my accident, was by 
raising it in vapour in exhausted vessels, and ‘then decom- 
posing it by heat; but in experiments of this kind, even 
though the whele of the substance was expanded into 
elastic matter, yet the vessel was often broken by the ex- 
plosion, and in several instances violent detonations oc- 
curred during the process of exhaustion, probably from the 
contact of the vapour of the substance with the oil used in 
the pump. 
In the only instance in which I was able to examine the 
products of the explosion of the substance in an exhausted 
vessel, no muriatic acid or water was formed, and chlorine 
and azote were produced; but it was impossible to form 
any correct opinion concerning the proportions of the 
gaseous matter evolved, as an unknown quantity of com- 
mon air must have remained mixed with the vapour in the 
vessel, : 
The action of mercury on the compound appeared to 
offer a more correct and less dangerous mode of attempting 
its analysis; but on introducing two grains under a glass 
tube filled with mercury and inverted, a violent detonation 
occurred, by which I was slightly wounded in the ya and 
ands, 
