Mercury Sulphites, and the Constitution 

 of Oxygenous Salts. 



By 



Edward Divers, M.D., F.R.S., 



Professor of Chemistry, Imperial University, 



and 



Tetsukichi Shimidzu, M. E. 



Of the Chemistry Section of the Department of Agriculture and Commerce. 



Mucli less can be done in the direction of determining the 

 constitution of inorganic compounds than of carbon compounds. 

 One consequence of this is the one-sided development of descriptive 

 chemistry, in which our knowledge of carbo-hydrogen compounds 

 far exceeds that of all the others. Modern views about the constitution 

 of inorganic salts is based almost entirely upon observations of the 

 nature of organic compounds, since it is usually considered that very 

 little can be learned on this point by a study of the salts themselves. 

 In the course of our own studies, the main results of which have been 

 already published, it has seemed, however, to us that in the metals 

 mercury, silver, and to a less extent, copper, we have elements diifer- 

 ing sufficiently in tlieir chemical affinity from other well-known 

 metals, to enable us by their means to test at least one important 

 point in the constitution of salts. The metals we have named do not 

 decompose water or set free hydrogen from an acid; their affinities 

 are for nitrogen and for sulphur, rather than for oxygen; and they 



