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SELECTED ARTICLES. 
The researches which have heen hitherto made upon the 
salts which the vegetable bases form with the oxacids, appear 
to prove that these salts, or, at least, many of them, may be 
obtained in an anhydrous state. Thus, according to M. Baup, 
the sulphates of quinia and cinchonia lose all their water of 
crystallization at 120° and remain completely anhydrous. It 
is the same with the sulphates of strychnia and morphia 
according to the anatyses of M. Liebig. This latter chemist, 
admits, on the contrary, that the dried sulphate of quinia con- 
tains two atoms of water. The analyses of Serullas and M. 
Pelletier upon the chlorates and iodates, appear to show that 
these salts loose all their water by dessication. 
The analyses which I have made of a great number of salts 
formed by these bases with the oxacids, clearly show that all 
the salts contain one atom of water, which is necessary to their 
composition, and cannot be taken away without their decompo- 
sition. Thus these bases exhibit a complete analogy with 
ammonia in their manner of acting with the acids. They com- 
bine directly with the hydracids without decomposition, and 
form hydrochlorates and not chlorides, as is the case with the 
mineral oxides; and with the oxacids dissolved in water, the 
vegetable bases combine, and fix one atom of water which enters 
intimately into combination with them. It is remarkable that 
the interesting bases, containing nitrogen, lately discovered by 
M. Liebig, contain one atom of water in most of the salts 
which they form with the oxacids. It is probable that their 
other oxysalts present an analogous composition. Finally, urea, 
which, from the whole of its properties, cannot be considered 
otherwise than as an organic base, does not make an excep- 
tion to this general mode of composition, as I have perceived 
in the analyses of the oxalate and nitrate of urea, which, until 
the present time, have been considered anhydrous. 
We are thus led to divide the substances which act the part 
of bases into two very distinct groups. 
In the first group are comprised those substances which 
cannot combine with the hydracids without decomposition; 
which, for example, form with hydrochloric acid, chlorides, 
