ACETIC ACID. 



cause it forms no insoluble salts. On this ac- 

 count, we cannot have recourse to the method 

 of double decomposition, which has answered so 

 well in many of the investigations communicated 

 in the preceding pages of this work. Before 

 proceeding farther, I must express my obliga- 

 tions to two of my friends, both of them chemi- 

 cal manufacturers in Glasgow, I mean Mr. 

 Charles M'Intosh and Mr. Ramsay ; the former 

 of whom furnished me with liquid acetic acid in 

 a state of perfect purity, while the latter gave 

 me a pure hydrated acetic acid, in the state of 

 crystals. Had it not been for the purity of the 

 acids thus furnished me, I should have been un- 

 der the necessity of relinquishing this acid in 

 despair. 



1. Berzelius analyzed several of the acetates Analysis of 



acetate cf 



with his accustomed care and accuracy, and was soda by 

 at great pains to obtain them quite free from 

 water ; but, unfortunately, there is no criterion 

 by which we can determine whether we have 

 rendered a salt perfectly anhydrous or not, un- 

 less it be a substance capable of bearing a red 

 heat, which is far from being the case with any 

 of the acetates. It is the freeing these salts 

 from water which constitutes the great difficulty 

 in analyzing them ; but Berzelius' experiments 

 are made with such scrupulous attention to ac- 

 curacy, that they deserve peculiar notice. 

 They will certainly furnish us with pretty near 



