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SELECTED ARTICLES. 
posed by slight elevations of temperature; they give precipi- 
tates with nitrate of silver; they give off chlorous acid gas 
with brisk effervescence, when treated by the mineral acids 
and by some organic acids; this is their characteristic pro- 
perty. Those which I have examined are all soluble in water; 
they are the salts of potassa, soda, baryta and lime. They 
may be procured without difficulty, by passing a current of the 
gas (generated by Count Stadion's process) through solutions 
of the first three bases, and through a milk of lime. By con- 
tinuing the operation until the liquid ceases to absorb the gas, 
solutions are obtained which are perfectly neutral, possess 
great bleaching power, and are decomposed with evolution of 
chlorous acid gas, by the addition of even a diluted acid. The 
products thus obtained, were thought by Berzelius to be solu- 
tions of a mixture of chlorides and chlorates; but, if we make 
a strong solution of a chloride and chlorate, and saturate it 
even with chlorous acid, and then treat it with an acid, no 
appreciable quantity of chlorous acid is evolved: a proof that 
the solutions procured as above are really compounds of chlo- 
rous acid and alkaline bases. It was thought that chlorites 
did not exist, because during the saturation of a concentrated 
solution of potassa by chlorous acid, a large quantity of chlo- 
rate of potassa subsides, and chloride of potassium remains dis- 
solved. But these salts are formed only when the solution is 
charged to a certain degree with the chlorite, and their forma- 
tion is the result of the insolubility of the chlorate in the 
quantity of liquid operated on; for it does not take place when 
we saturate a milk of lime, or a solution of one part of potassa 
in thirty of water, with chlorous acid. We can obtain a more 
concentrated solution of chloride of potassa than of chlorite of 
potassa, because the spontaneous decomposition of the latter 
gives rise to a proportionally greater quantity of chlorate, as 
will be seen hereafter. As the chlorate of soda is much more 
soluble than that of potassa, we should be able to obtain a 
stronger solution of the chlorite of soda than of that of potassa, 
which is the case; for, having passed chlorous acid gas into 
a solution of one part of soda in five or six of water, until the 
