Patten—Solutions of Hydrochloric Acid in Solvents. 325 
back up the tube by which the gas entered, into the P 2 0 5 drying 
tower. When extra pressure was put on to force the solvent 
back into its flask, the stopper was blown from one of the drying 
towers and some air got in, but no moisture could have reached 
to the flask containing the metals and chloroform, since it was 
well protected by the remaining phosphorous pentoxide drying 
towers, two on each side. The chloroform came for a short 
time in contact with the rubber tube connecting the flask to the 
drying tower; however, the negative results of this experiment 
will stand: Iron, nickel, copper, silver, gold, platinum, ar¬ 
senic, tellurium, and palladium remain perfectly bright in pres¬ 
ence of the chloroform solution of hydrogen chloride; alumi¬ 
num, chromium, manganese, lead, tin, and antimony evolve no 
gas. Magnesium gives off very much less gas than comes from 
the zinc. Oalcite and witherite are not attacked. Contact of 
the metals with each other makes no 1 difference in the rate at 
which gas is evolved. This experiment was carried out at room 
temperature, 22° C. Finally the solution was siphoned out of 
the flask under pressure into a platinum crucible and its electri¬ 
cal conductivity tested. Using a direct current of 110 volts 
pressure and a Jewell voltmeter of 20,000 resistance as an am¬ 
meter, I got a deflection of 5 volt divisions, which corresponds 
to a current of 0.00025 ampere. The bottom of the crucible 
served as one electrode; the platinum disk serving as the other 
electrode was 1.75 cm. in diameter, and the distance between 
electrodes was about one millimeter. 
Experiment 2. A second sample of dried chloroform was 
treated exactly as in the first experiment. The results are 
given in table I. Zinc, aluminum, magnesium, tin and lead 
are acted upon by HC1 solution with evolution of gas. The 
violence of action is in the order just given. Mo black deposit 
was observed; possibly it came from dissolved rubber in the 
first experiment. The other metals were not acted upon. 
Experiment 3. A third sample of dried chloroform was 
treated as in experiments 1 and 2. The hydrogen chloride so¬ 
lution acted upon zinc, aluminum, magnesium, tin and lead, in 
the order given, with evolution of gas. Nickel, lead and tin 
