FULMINATING MERCURY. 



revived, and, I presume, thrown into vapour, as may well be 

 imagined, from the immense quantity of caloric extricated, by 

 adding concentrate sulphuric acid to the mercurial powder* 



' I will not venture to state, with accuracy, in what proper, 

 tions its constituent principles are combined. The affinities I 

 have brought into play are complicated, and the constitution of the 

 substances I hare to d^al with not fully known. But to make 

 round numbers, I will resume the statement, that 100 grains of 

 the mercurial powder lost sixteen grains of its original weight, by 

 treatment with dilute sulphuric acid : eighty-four grains of the 

 mercurial oxalate, mixed with a few minute globules of quick, 

 silver, remained undissolved in the acid. The sulphuric liquor 

 was saturated with carbonic of potash, and yielded 3.4 grains of 

 carbonate of mercury. If 1.4 grains should be thought a proper 

 allowance for the weight of carbonic acid in the 3.4 grains, I will 

 make that deduction, and add the remaining two grains to the 

 eight). foil r grains of mercurial oxalate and quicksilver; I shall 

 then have, 



Of oxalate and mercury - 86 grains. 



And a deficit, to be ascribed to the nitrous 

 etherized gass, and excess of oxygen 14 



100 



" It may perhaps be proper to proceed still further, and 

 recur to the 48.5 grains, separated by nitrate of lime from the 

 eighty.four grains of mercurial oxalate, and globules of quicksilver. 

 These 48.5 grains were proved to be oxalate of lime; but they 

 contained a minute inseparable quantity of mercury, almost in the 

 state of quicksilver, formerly part of the eighty.four grains from 

 which they were separated. Had the 48.5 grains been pure cal. 

 careous oxalate, the quantity of pure oxalic acid in them would, 

 according to Bergmann, be 23.28 grains. Hence, by omitting 

 the two grains of mercury, in the 3.4 grains of carbonate, 100 

 grains of the mercurial powder might have been said to contain, 

 of pure oxalic acid, 23.28 grains ; of mercury 62.72 grains ; and 

 of nitrous etherized gass, and excess of oxygen, fourteen grains. 

 But as the 48.5 grains were not pure oxalate, inasmuch as they 

 contained the mercury they received from the eighty-four grains, 

 from which they were generated by the nitrate of lime, some 

 allowance must be made for the mercury, successively intermixed 



o4 



