CV111 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



production of ammonia took place actually within the volcanic crater, 

 or during the process of eruption, — assuming in the first instance, 

 that the combination of boron, titanium, or any other metal with 

 nitrogen had at least been effected in the volcanic laboratory. 



The paper byMr.B,obertWarington,F.C.S.,read so far back asl854, 

 at the Liverpool meeting of the British Association, and published in 

 the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, April 1855, is valuable, as 

 it shows the actual circumstances under which both boracic acid and 

 ammonia may be found. Mr. Warington founds his remarks on infor- 

 mation from a friend who visited the island of Yulcano, twelve miles 

 north of Sicily. The volcanic mountain is estimated to be 2000 feet 

 in height, and its crater is about 700 feet deep. The area at the 

 bottom, about 10 acres in extent, is paved, as it were, with small 

 loose fragments of limestone ; and the ground is so hot as rapidly to 

 destroy the leather of the shoes. A thermometer thrust between the 

 stones indicated a temperature between 250° and 500° ; so that the 

 conditions of the locality were peculiarly favourable for the study of 

 the phenomena under consideration, as it is evident that there was 

 nothing extraneous to interfere with the results. On looking down 

 on the area, it appeared covered with a substance like finely- drifted 

 snow, which was found, on examination, to consist of crystallized 

 boracic acid. This incrustation, about an inch thick, being dug 

 through with a pickaxe, a mass of red-hot fused lava, similar in 

 appearance to the slag of a glass-house, spumed up, and was found 

 to consist of fused saline matters forming a coherent mass of vol- 

 canic debris. " When the ground covered with boracic acid is dug 

 down for about eight inches, a red-hot mass of sal-ammoniac is 

 always found," as also sulphur. Now this is not a temporary phe- 

 nomenon, as the boracic acid is constantly renewed when removed, 

 and has become, together with sal-ammoniac and sulphur, a regular 

 source of income to the proprietors, to whom it yields about .£1000 

 per annum, — sulphur being obtained by fusing the stone of which the 

 sides of the volcano are composed, sal-ammoniac from the lixiviation 

 of the scoria or lava, and boracic acid, either at once from the surface, 

 or by receiving the sublimed acid in open barrels filled with broom- 

 twigs or other plants, placed there for its reception. 



It will be observed from these observations, as Mr. Warington 

 states, that the sal-ammoniac sent to him was obtained by the lixi- 

 viation of the fused mass ; and its exact condition, therefore, in that 

 mass he had no means of determining. On the boracic acid, how- 

 ever, which came to him as collected, he was enabled to experiment. 

 The boracic acid having been boiled in diluted muriatic acid, the solu- 

 tion was subsequently decanted from the undissolved portion. This 

 again was boiled in a weak solution of caustic potash, without yield- 

 ing any trace of ammonia, but the residue being washed with distilled 

 water, dried and fused in a tube of hard glass with caustic potash, 

 gave strong evidence of the formation and liberation of ammonia. 

 From these experiments, therefore, Mr. Warington concludes that 

 the reactions are similar in character to those effected by Balmain in 

 1842, and by Wohler. In them the nitride of boron was first ob- 



