382 Transactions. — Chemistry. 



metallic oxides are soluble in alkaline oxides ; further, cyanogen, like oxygen, 

 is capable of assuming an allotropic condition. 



Following up analogies here, I would class cyanogen and sulphur together, 

 and so I would their hydrides. HS, like cyanogen, is not strongly acid, 

 indeed probably not acid at all, for as in the case of hydrocyanic acid HS 

 exhibits a great tendency to oxidize when in contact with water and to form 

 oxyacids, so that in testing this gas for acidity we are liable to obtain reactions 

 not due to the gas itself. 



Our new nomenclature, by doubling the equivalents of oxygen and sulphur, 

 has disturbed the uniformity which before this existed between their common 

 liydrides and that of cyanogen ; thus one point of resemblance has been 

 removed, but I think this has been done somewhat arbitrarily in regard to 

 cyanogen. Certainly when the equivalent of cyanogen is retained, its hydride 

 then being Cy H (hydrocyanic acid), comparing with that of chlorine, the su])- 

 posed similarity of these substances is maintained ; and this by the way may have 

 been one of the reasons for which the doubling process described was broken 

 off at cyanogen. However, if I am correct in assuming that this compound is 

 analogous with oxygen rather than with chlorine, its equivalent will also 

 require doubling. If you now agree with me, or at least will contemplate the 

 possibility that cyanogen is not analogous to chlorine and its isomorphs, but 

 rather to oxygen, you will be in a position to perceive certain interesting 

 relations which it bears to oxygen, and which could not well have presented 

 themselves had the assumption I have here attempted to disprove remained 

 unassailed. 



Thus ferro- and ferri-cyanogen become upon this view ferri-oxides in which 

 oxygen is replaced by its isomer cyanogen, and the same being true for the rest 

 of the metallic cyanides, these substances should be, I think, viewed as 

 comparing with the oxides of sulphur and chromium as they exist in the 

 sulphates or chromates ; further, sulphocyanogen and selenocyanogen, the only 

 compounds containing cyanogen (or at least its elements), which do compare 

 with the simple halogens, are not at all analogous with cyanogen. The 

 cyanides thus viewed are not salts at all any more than the oxides arc ; 

 Bulphocyanides on the other hand are true salts, comparing exactly with the 

 corresjionding salts of the halogens. 



Further, in regard to the question often raised as to the nature of certain 

 of our elements, whether compound or not, it seems interesting that in this 

 compound, cyanogen, we have a substance very similar to the element 

 oxygen, one which at least only varies from it within the limits we are 

 compelled to allow for variation in the members of certain well defined natural 

 groups of our elements. We are thus, as far as is allowable from such apparent 

 resemblances, justified in entci-taining the supposition that oxygen itself ia 



