536 Essay upon the Compounds of Cyanogen. 



when washed and dried, is the detonating salt* It is white, pulveru- 

 lent, and slightly soluble in water. It is dangerously explosive and 

 detonates with extreme violence, w^hen struck with a hammer, or sub- 

 mitted to fi"iction between hard bodies. The contact of sulphuric 

 acid produces a similar effect. When mixed with forty times its 

 weight of peroxide of copper, it maybe exposed to heat widiout dan- 

 ger of explosion, and is then slowly decomposed, giving off water, 

 carbonic acid and nitrogen, the relative quantities of the two latter be- 

 ing such as to indicate the presence of carbon and nitrogen in the same 

 proportion as iu cyanogen. When muriate of potassa is added to a 

 solution of fulminating silver, 07ie half oi the silver is separated in the 

 form of insoluble chloride, and argento-cyanate of potassa remains in 

 solution. Muriatic acid precipitates all the silver. The results of 

 experiments instituted by Liebig and Gay-Lussac, to ascertain the 

 constitution of the salt were by no means constant, but the following 

 is given as the mean. 



Silver, 

 Oxygen, 

 Cyanogen, - 

 Loss, 



72.187 



5.341 



17.160 



5.312 



100.000 



The loss of 5.312 per cent., is attributed by these chemists to ox- 

 ygen, but certainly without sufficient reason. It is to be remarked 

 that no allowance has been made for the hydrogen which is proved 

 to be present from the water obtained as one of the products of its dis- 

 tillation with peroxide of copper. The only reason for attributing so 

 great a loss to oxygen, appears to be that such a supposition is ne- 

 cessary to confirm a previously formed hypothesis, that the fulminating 

 salt is a cyanite, and the fulminic acid a super-cyanite of silver. Hav- 

 ing already alluded to the analogy between the ferro-cyanic and the 

 fulminic acids, I will endeavor to prove that a hypothetical statement 

 of the constitution of fulminating silver founded upon an equally strik- 

 ing analogy between it and prussian blue, Is more consistent with ihe 

 result of the French chemists, than that wliich they themselves have 

 adopted. Regarding the salt then as an argento-cyanate of silver, 

 and supposing it consdtuted like the prussian blue, it will contam 



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