METALLIC COMPOUNDS. 
43 
water. That is to say, scarcely different from ten times as 
much. 
Stibias cupricus i orms a green precipitate very voluminous stibiate of 
and perfectly insoluble, which, after drying, has a very pale copper, 
verdigris colour. When exposed to fire, it loses about 19 per 
cent, water of crystallization, and becomes green. Heated 
before the blow-pipe upon charcoal it is reduced with a lively 
deflagration, and produces stibium cupri in form of a metallic 
globule of a very pale copper colour. 
In a solution of corrosive sublimate the stibiate of potash 
at first affords no precipitate , but after some time the mixture 
deposits a grey yellowish very light mass, which, for the most 
part, remains suspended in the liquor. The filtered solution 
does not contain the smallest share of stibic acid. 
Will it be necessary, in this place, for me to remark, that the These corn- 
compounded bodies, of which I have here given a superficial pounds are 
description, were, in fact, chemical combinations, and not pre- tures^but ch* 
cipitates, formed at the same time and mechanically mixed to- combinations, 
gether? Their crystalline appearance, their solubility in water, 
as well as the circumstance, that the stibiate of magnesia pre- 
serves its colour in the air, which could not have happened if 
the compound had been a mere mixture of the oxides of anti- 
mony and of manganese, prove that these substances were 
actually substances analogous to salts of sparing solubility in 
water. 
The stibic acid, in common with other weak acids, has the Stibic acid as 
property of combining with stronger acids, to which it performs a ^ ase » &c * 
the functions of a base in the same manner as the boracic acid 
does with the sulphuric and the fluoric, and as the carbonic* 
and the arsenious acids do with the muriatic. The stibic acid 
* Mr. John Davy, a distinguished English chemist, has discovered a 
combination of muriatic and carbonic acids. He produced it by 
passing electric discharges through a mixture of oximuriatic gas and 
gaseous oxide of carbon. The two gases combined in equal volumes, 
and did not then occupy more than half the space they occupied be- 
fore. The excess of oxigen in the oximuriatic gas is precisely the 
quantity requisite to convert an equal volume of gaseous oxide of car- 
bon into carbonic acid ; and, according to the calculation of the com- 
position of the muriatic acid, it is found that, in this new combination, 
the muriatic acid and the carbonic acid contain an equal quantity of 
oxigen. B. 
