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SELECTED ARTICLES. 
water; nevertheless, that no doubt might remain of the fact, 
I wished to confirm it by acting upon some precipitate per se, 
previously prepared by M. Deyeux, and which I had pre- 
served in the matrass in which it had been formed by the 
calcination of mercury. A certain quantity of this oxide, 
reduced to a fine powder, was shaken up with distilled water, 
at the temperature of 10°. The filtered liquor changed to 
green, in an unequivocal manner, a very dilute solution of 
syrup of violets; but was completely insensible to hydro- 
sulphate of ammonia. Boiling water, on the contrary, was 
so much charged with the oxide, that it changed the syrup 
of violets strongly green; it restored to blue the red paper of 
tournsol; it was changed brown by the hydrosulphate of 
ammonia, forming a precipitate which, at first, was suspended 
in the liquor, but afterwards subsided to the bottom of the 
vessel in black flocculi. 
I do not think, after these observations, that any one will 
dispute the fact, that perfectly pure deutoxide of mercury is 
slightly soluble in distilled water. 
Jourji. de Pharmacie. 
