On Fulminating Gold. 477 
that the acids should be able to dissolve oxide of this same qua- 
lity, both which are absolutely impossibilities: and if such ef- 
fects could be obtained, they would multiply ad infinitum the 
number of oxides, salts, and all other bodies having oxygen in 
combination. 
Nevertheless fire and time, by adding calorie to the oxygen 
of the gold, determine the disengagement of the principles of 
the fulminating gold and their being taken in solution: energetic 
combustibles take from the gold the oxygen, with its defect of 
caloric, reduce its metal, and set the ammonia at liberty: which 
explains how, in a globe of fire strongly heated, the fulminating 
gold is decomposed without fulminating ; which certainly would 
not happen if the ball were platina, gold, or silver. 
Ammonia has too little affinity with water to enable that 
liquid aided by heat to take it from the gold: nevertheless 
the heat in this case brings together the active principles of the 
compound ; and this happens when we wash it with very hot 
water: the caloric displaces in the first place the ammonia from 
the oxide, the hydrogen from the azote, and the oxygen from 
the gold, and pressure disunites them by forming water. Ful- 
minating gold does not detonate under water, for want of power 
to take the temperature requisite for this effect; and at a heat 
a little higher it resolves into its nearest principles, with the 
single exception of the case in which it has been washed too 
hot. 
Carbon organized and hydrogenated in the oils with ether and 
alcohol, as well as azote hydrogenated in ammonia, take up the 
oxide of gold from its solvents; which proves that this body acts 
more willingly by capacity than by intensity; and the oils may 
even decompose the fulminating gold by taking up on one hand 
its oxide and on the other hand its ammonia. The oxide of 
gold which is separated from its solutions by the contact of the 
air—will it be qurate of organized azote, or oxide rendered inso- 
luble by hyperoxidation? In this last case, as these solutions 
are always with an excess of acid, the heating in those of the 
muriatic acid must determine the resumption in solution of the 
oxide under the formation of oxygenated muriatie acid. 
The sulpburic acid highly concentrated decomposes fulminating 
gold by provoking the union between the principles of the water 
in order to appropriate to itself this water... The detonating com- 
pounds, which the same acid decomposes with an explosion, set 
the oxygen at liberty. 
The fulminating gold is formed spontaneously in the same 
circumstances and by the same causes as the native nitrate of 
lime: it is the organized azote of the air hydrogenating itself 
into an oxidule which produces the first body, and the same 
Vol. 47, No, 215, March 1816. M azote 
