VOL, LVII.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 481 



appeared in a transparent saline form. The superfluous liquor, which remained 

 after the crystallization was completed, being put into a tea cup, concreted in 

 a very uncommon manner. In the middle of the tea cup it arose something like 

 a plant, or a fountain, where the water is discharged from a number of pipes, 

 and spread from the bottom of this, so as- to cover both the inside and outside of 

 the cup, with a sweetish, white, mealy, saline crust, which in many places 

 seemed disposed like the fine fibres of plants, or of the leaves of trees. 



1. As a further proof of the flowers of benzoin being an acid of a particular kind. 

 Dr. M. saturated some of them with the sal volatile ammoniacum, evaporated 

 and crystallized; and obtained an ammoniacal salt, which had a very singular 

 appearance. It was covered on the top with a very white saline pellicle, below 

 which were a number of thin, flat, white transparent crystals, the greater num- 

 ber of which seemed to be exact squares, some few, oblong parallelograms.* 



The flowers of benzoin generated a considerable degree of cold in the time of 

 their saturation with the volatile alkali ; they sunk the quicksilver in the ther- 

 mometer from 52 to 46. 



ExPER. 3 and 4. IVith the Salt of Amber. — The salt of amber is now gene- 

 rally known to be of an acid nature; but from what Mons. Bourdelin has said of 

 it, in the Memoirs of the French Academy of Sciences for the year 1 742, its 

 acid has been considered by many chemists to be exactly of the same nature as 

 the spirit of sea-salt, only mixed with a little of the oleum succini; though some 

 have imagined it to be an acid of the vitriolic kind. 



1st, When Dr. M. first mixed this acid with the fossil alkali, he began to 

 believe that what Mons. Bourdelin had alleged was true; for the liquor tasted 

 saltish, like a weak solution of sea-salt in common water; but he was soon con- 

 vinced of his error; for on evaporating and crystallizing, he had a salt very dif- 

 ferent in its nature and properties from that of sea-salt, or of glauber-salt, one 

 of which salts it must have been, had the acid been the marine or the vitriolic. 

 This agrees with what Dr. Stockar de Neuforn -f- has said of this being a parti- 

 cular acid.;}: 



The crystals Dr. M. obtained in the first experiment he made were large and 

 flat; they were of no certain shape or figure; some were roundish with a number 



• The salt thus obtained by combining the acid of benzoin with the volatile alkali, has been termed 

 by later chemists benzoate of ammonia. 



f In the year 1760, Dr. Jo. Geo. Stockar de Neuforn, in his inaugural Dissertation de Succino, 

 published at Leyden the 7th of July, 1760, proves by a number of experiments, that the acid of 

 succinum is neither that of vitriol nor of sea-salt; and he mentions two neutral salts made with this 

 acid, the one with the common vegetable alkali, and the other with the volatile. — Orig. 



X That the salt obtained by distillation from amber is a peculiar acid, is no longer a question 

 among chemists. In the new nomenclature, it is denominated succinic acid, 

 VOL, XII, 3 Q 



