ON THE SOLUBILITY OF SALTS. 291 



rectors of the Gas Company, for their courtesy and cooperation. The thanks 

 of the Committee are particularly clue to Lord Wrottesley for his active and 

 efficient aid, and for the reception of the Members under his hospitable roof 

 at Wotesley Hall. 



W. H. Sykes, 

 London, 20th August, 1859. Chairman. 



P.S. — Mr. Green not having fulfilled his engagement, was only paid his 



incidental expenses £7 5 11 



Gas 20 5 



Expenses of Committee 12 2 



Mi'. Eaton's carriage of instruments and ether 1 13 6 



Total : £11 4 7 



Preliminary Report on the Solubility of Salts at Temperatures above 

 1 00° Cent., and on the Mutual Action of Salts in Solution. By 

 William K. Sullivan, Professor of Chemistry to the Catholic 

 University of Ireland, and the Museum of Irish Industry. 



Notwithstanding the evident importance of the phenomena of solution, 

 not only in a purely physical and chemical point of view, but also in con- 

 nexion with many of the most interesting geological and physiological phe- 

 nomena, the subject, until recently, seems to have been almost altogether 

 neglected, as if by common consent. Our knowledge respecting the solu- 

 bility of any given substance in certain liquids, was usually comprised in such 

 expressions as " soluble," " very soluble," " difficultly soluble," &c. — I might 

 even say, is now comprised; for the law of solubility in water up to the tem- 

 perature of 100° Cent, can scarcely be said to be known for a dozen salts, and 

 has not been at all determined for higher temperatures or for other solvents. 

 Since the admirable experiments of Gay-Lussac, by which he established the 

 law of solubility of Glauber-salt, many important investigations, bearing upon 

 the subject of solution, have no doubt been published; but, generally speaking, 

 the immediate objects of these researches had to do with some other department 

 of physics or chemistry, rather than with the establishment of a theory of 

 solution. Among these I may mention Legrand's experiments on the in- 

 fluence of salts on the boiling-point, Frankenheim's on the capillarity of 

 saline solutions, the well-known researches of Graham on the diffusion 

 of solutions, of Person, Favre and Silbermann, Andrews, &c, on the latent 

 solution heat of salts, Play fair and Joule's researches on atomic volume, and 

 many others which it is needless to mention. Any experiments directly 

 bearing on the subject which did happen to have been made with the view of 

 determining numerical laws, were in general confined to the determination 

 of the quantity of salt held in solution at different temperatures, and to the 

 specific gravity of the solution. The range of temperature was usually 

 limited to that between 0° and the boiling-point of the solvent, or to that 

 of the dissolution. The uncultivated state of this important field of inquiry 

 is no doubt to be attributed in part to the great labour required to work 

 if, and the apparent insignificance of the results of even the most successful 

 research. The recent laborious investigations of Lbwel, Kremers, Gerlach, 

 Wullner and others, show, however, that it is no longer likely to remain 

 uncultivated ; and from the enlarged views of the general physical relations 



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