Page:Experimental researches in chemistry and.djvu/427

412 the gold solution gradually produces the ruby fluid at the bottom, but the action is very slow. If the phosphorus be attached to the side of the bottle, but always beneath the surface of the solution, the streams of ruby fluid may be seen moving both upwards and downwards against the side of the glass, and forming films in the vicinity of the phosphorus perfect in their golden reflexion, and yet transmitting light of ruby, violet, and other tints, thus giving, first a proof that the particles are gold, and then connecting the present condition of the gold with that of the Elms already described. On the other hand, the phosphorus may be excluded and the sulphide of carbon employed alone; for when it and the solution of gold are shaken together, the gold is reduced and the ruby fluid formed; but it soon changes to purple or violet.

A quick and ready mode of producing the ruby fluid, is to put a quart of the weak solution of gold (containing about 0.6 of a grain of metal) into a clean bottle, to add a little solution of phosphorus in ether, and then to shake it well for a few moments: a beautiful ruby or amethystine fluid is immediately produced, which will increase in depth of tint by a little time. Generally, however, the preparations made with phosphorus dissolved in sulphide of carbon, are more ruby than those Where ether is the phosphorus solvent. The process of reduction appears to consist in a transfer of the chlorine from the gold to the phosphorus, and the formation of phosphoric or phosphorous acids and hydrochloric acid, by the further action of the water.

The fluids produced may easily be tested for any gold yet remaining unreduced, by trial of a portion with solution of protochloride of tin. If any be found, it is easily reduced by the addition of a little more of the phosphorus in solution. After all the gold is separated as solid particles, the fluid may be considered in its perfected state. Occasionally it may smell of phosphorus in excess, even after it has been poured off from the deposited particles of it and the sulphide. In that case it is easy to deprive it of this excess by agitation in a bottle with air. When kept in closed vessels moldiness often occurs. If this be in groups it is collected with facility at the end of a splinter of wood and removed, or the whole fluid may be poured through a wet plug of cotton in the neck