Van Mons. - 155 
gives eight of oxygen; and which leave as their residues, the 
former a black powder composed of 14 of dry muriatic acid 
and of 82 of reduced mercury; and the latter a red powder 
composed of 20 of dry muriatic acid and 72 of reduced mer- 
eury ; and all powders of astonishing lightness, of dull instead 
of bright colours, which the oxygen regenerates into their primi- 
tive salts, and from which water takes up the dry acids, the mer- 
eury remaining reduced ? 
** Berzelius is of my way of thinking, as to the existence of 
oxygen in azote. I have subjoined a note on this subject. 1 was 
the frst to class azote among the combustibles, and the first also 
to class it among the onidated bodies. Wherefore all this noise 
about a new theory ?—is it not merely putting in a new form 
what others have invented ? 
‘© Prussie acid has been found in opium inGermany ; and from 
this discovery it has been concluded that the narcotic virtue of 
opium depends on thatacid. You will agree with me, that there 
is only astep between them. 
‘* | have found that we may extract the soluble parts of most 
organized substances, by treating their powder precisely like 
coffee. But if too much boiling water is poured in, nothing 
more of the substance is communicated to it. I made my first 
experiment of this kind on gall-nuts in powder, for making ink, 
and [ made it with perfect ease. The ink obtained was a true 
black, did not become thick, and did not deposit any of its ingre- 
dients; but we must use the sulphate oxidated, and not that 
which is oxidulated, and put in the gum and sugar-candy last of 
all. 
“ It is said that Gay-Lussac has published a work on the prussi¢ 
acid, and that he as found, like me, that this acid is azoto- 
carbonated hydrogen. I have said, in my translation of Bu- 
cholz and of Davy, that this acid is similar to the hydrothionic 
acid, or sulphureited hydrogen. The hydrogens proper to the 
two combustibles, and those which constitute them, azote 
in the state of ammonia, and sulphur in the state of hydro- 
genated sulphur, are taken up by the third hydrogen, and the 
dry acids are exposed. The hydrogens may by heat be taken 
from the double radical of the prussie acid, without the elements 
of this radical being separated; and I am ‘ted to think that they 
are united in the same manner as carbon is with sulphur in the 
alcohol of ampadius ; i.e. the combustible which is found in the 
highest ratio is substituted for the oxygen of the dry acid of the 
other combustible, this oxygen being proportioned to the water. 
In the combination the carbon or the azote is in a reduced state, 
and they are also subsaturated with the quantity of hydrogen 
which serves to compose their oxygen into water. This ex- 
re plains 
. 
