Reser: 7: 
LIX. On the mutual Action of Sulphuric Acid and Naphtha- 
line, and on a new Acid produced. By M. Farapay, Esq. 
F.R.S. Corresponding Member of the Royal Academy of 
Sciences, &c. Sc. 
[Concluded from p. 332,] 
2. Salts formed by the peculiar Acid with Bases. 
(THESE compounds may be formed, either by acting on 
the bases or their carbonates by the pure acid, obtained 
as already described; or the impure acid in solution may be 
used, the salts resulting being afterwards freed from sulphates, 
by solution in alcohol. It is however proper to mention that 
another acid, composed of the same elements, is at the same 
time formed with the acid in question, in small, but variable 
proportions. The impure acid used, therefore, should be ex- 
amined as to the presence of this body, in the way to be di- 
rected when speaking of the barytic salts ; and such specimens 
as contain very little or none of it should be selected. 
Potash forms with the acid a neutral salt, soluble in water 
and alcohol, forming colourless solutions. These yield either 
transparent or white pearly crystals, which are soft, slightly 
fragile, feel slippery between the fingers, do not alter by ex- 
posure to air, and are bitter and saline to the taste. They are 
not very soluble in water; but they undergo no change by re- 
peated solutions and crystallizations, or by long continued 
ebullition. The solutions frequently yield the salt in acicular 
tufts, and they often vegetate, as it were, by spontaneous eva- 
poration, the salt creeping over the sides of the vessel, and 
running to a great distance in very beautiful forms. The solid 
salt heated in a tube gave off a little water, then some naph- 
thaline; after that a little carbonic and sulphurous acid gases 
arose, and a black ash remained, containing carbon, sulphate 
of potash, and sulphuret of potassium. When the salt was 
heated on platinum foil, in the air, it burnt with a dense flame, 
leaving a slightly alkaline sulphate of potash. 
Soda yields a salt, in most properties resembling that of 
potash; crystalline, white, pearly, and unaltered in the air. 
I thought that, in it, the metallic taste which frequently oc- 
curred with this acid and its compounds was very decided. 
The action of heat was the same as before. 
Ammonia formed a neutral salt imperfectly crystalline, not 
deliquescent, but drying in the atmosphere. Its taste was sa- 
line and cooling. It was readily soluble in water and alcohol. 
When heated on platinum foil it fused, blackened, burnt with 
fiame, and left a carbonaceous acid sulphate of ammonia, which 
by 
