ALKALIES. 



(a.) Transparent and colorless ; smell, highly odorant and pun- 

 gent. Agreeable, if largely diluted with air ; it causes a sharp prick- 

 ly sensation in the hands, and if the skin is moist, it is absorbed, and 

 is almost corrosive ; combining with the moisture on the eye-balls, it 

 causes a sensation of intolerable pain. It is therefore decidedly caus- 

 tic, and could it be made solid without combination, it would doubtless 

 act on animal matter with as much energy as the fixed alkalies do. 



(6.) Specific Gravity 0.5957, air being I. -Weight, 18.17, at 

 the medium temperature and pressure. 



(c.) Hostile to animal life. An animal immersed in it instantly 

 dies. It kills by suffocation and excoriation ; admitted into the fauces 

 it is intensely painful ; it causes a violent spasm as soon as it reaches 

 the glottis, and produces the most distressing coughing, and a lasting 

 irritation. 



5. CHEMICAL PROPERTIES. 



(a.) Instantly absorbed by water, a drop of which being admitted 

 and agitated with the gas, the mouth of the vessel being closed by the 

 finger, and then opened under the fluid, it rushes in as it would into a 

 vacuum. Ice melts in the gas more rapidly than it would in the fire ; if 

 passed up into ajar of gas standing over mercury, the metal rises rap- 

 idly as the ice melts, and the gas is absorbed to form liquid ammonia. 



(b.) Ice-cold water absorbs 780 times its volume of this gas. 

 (Thomson.) Sir H. Davy has stated its absorbability at 475 ; water 

 easily absorbs this quantity, and then holds about one third of its 

 weight of the gas. Sir H. Davy's more recent statement was, that 

 670 times its volume of this gas, was condensed into one of water. 



(c.) Aqua jlmjnonice is 

 prepared in pharmacy and in 

 chemistry, by passing am- 

 moniacal gas, from equal 

 parts of slacked lime, and 

 muriate of ammonia, heated 

 in an iron bottle, through ice 

 cold water, contained in 

 Woulfe's bottles, the contents 

 of the first being rejected as 

 impure. For a figure of 

 Woulfe's apparatus, see mu- 

 riatic acid. I annex a cut 

 from Dr. Hare, of an appa- 

 ratus which will answer for 

 a common experiment. It 

 needs no explanation. 



(d.) The aqua ammonia 

 smells like the gas; it is a 

 very useful reagent, and an 

 efficacious medicine. 



