366 Intelligence and Miscellanies. 
‘The circumstances under which I procured it are nearly 
these. A quarter of a pound of opium was boiled in a quart 
of proof spirit, and strained while warm through a coarse 
cotton cloth. he solution, thus obtained, being allowed to 
stand for about twenty four hours, crystals were observed to 
be spontaneously deposited on the sides of the contamng 
glass jar. These being dissolved in acetic acid, on the ad- 
dition of ammonia a precipitate took place which was col- 
lected by a filter, and dried. Narcotin was thus obtained 
in the form of white, beautiful silky crystals, which were 
readily soluble in sulphuric ether. 
en we consider how often opium has been dissolved 
in proof spirit by chemists and pharmacopists, it is surprising 
that crystalline principles so easily evolved, as are morphia 
and narcotin, by the process above described, should have 
escaped observation until lately, when Sertuerner by a much 
less obvious route had the honor of discovering them. 
7. An account of an extraordinary explosion, arismg from 
nitric acid with phosphorus ; by the author of 
the preceding article.—In the winter of 1827-8, having made 
some unusually strong nitric acid, (above 1.5 in specific grav- 
ity,) | proceeded, with more than usual caution, to arrange 
the apparatus for exhibiting to my class the reaction between 
it and phosphorus. A tube, about seven eighths of an inch in 
diameter, closed at one end, was placed within a stout hollow 
glass cylinder, of about three inches diameter, of which the 
lass was nearly three eighths of an inch thick. The whole 
was situated about four feet in the rear of my table. About 
five grains of phosphorus, in two or three lumps, was thrown 
into about as much of the acid, as occupied the tube an 
inch and a half in height. Very soon afterwards there was 
a flash, followed by an explosion, like that of gunpowder, 
and the fragments of the glass cylinder as well as o the 
lave : 
combustion of phosphorus in nitric acid, and I have, on dif- 
