236' Scientific Intelligence. [Sept. 



substance — a circumstance which seemed to oppose an insurmountable 

 obstacle to their regular arrangement. Barley sugar, so crystallized, 

 is much more brittle than before ; its fracture presents a multitude of 

 small, fibrous, diverging, acicular crystals, collected in numerous 

 bundles,* terminated by interstices, provided this sort of crystalline 

 arrangement has, taken place slowly ; that is, below the mean tempera- 

 ture ; when held for some time in the mouth, instead of remaining 

 glossy and polished, it becomes full of hollows and asperities: with 

 some care, we may separate the needle crystals, which appear, when 

 viewed by the microscope, to be flattened tetrahedral prisms. Accord- 

 ing to the known conditions of crystallization, it was to be presumed, 

 that that of barley sugar could only proceed by its gradually attracting 

 moisture from the air ; but having left some for a month in a close 

 stopped bottle, containing chloride of calcium, the sugar lost about 

 1 -200th of its weight, and crystallized quite as well as in the free air. 

 In oil of turpentine, the same result was obtained. 



The confectioners are aware of, and fear the effects of, this singular 

 crystallization of barley sugar, which they call its dying, seeing nothing 

 in this tendency to perfection, but an insensible degradation. They 

 would wish to find the means of preventing it, but it appears that 

 nothing can hinder it from taking place. — (Ann. de Chim. xvi. 427.) 



III. New Blineral Substance. 



Mr. J. Deuchar found, a few weeks ago, a new mineral substance 

 imbedded in striped limestone. It melts at the candle, and burns on 

 a wick, or paper. In the cold, it is insoluble in alcohol, potash, or oil 

 of turpentine ; nor is it acted upon in the cold, after five days' exposure 

 to sulphuric, muriatic, or nitric acids. He is now engaged with its 

 analysis. 



IV. On Compounds of Sulphur with Cyanogen, §c. 



M. Berzelius, in pursuance of his Researches on the Compounds of 

 Cyanogen (p. 208), has lately examined the sulphuretted compounds of 

 cyanogen, and added much to our knowledge of them. He concludes 

 that the substance, as prepared by M. Grotthus or M. Vogel (i. e. by 

 fusing sulphur with ferroprussiate of potash, dissolving, filtering, and 

 drying), is a sulphocyanuret of potassium; and though he has not been 

 able to separate the sulphocyanogen or sulphuret of cyanogen from the 

 base, so as to have it in a separate state, yet he deduces its composi- 

 tion from experiments, as being 1 atom cyanogen, and 2 atoms of 

 sulphur, or 



Carbon 20-63 2 atoms 15066 



Azote 24-23 .... 1 atom .... 177*26 



Sulphur 55 09 2 atoms 402-32 



10000 73024 



The sulphocyanuret of potassium is composed of 



* Faisceaux. 



