Page:Experimental researches in chemistry and.djvu/69

54 gas; when heated, melting, boiling, and subliming at a temperature between 350° and 400°, and subliming slowly without melting at a heat of about 250°, forming long needles. Potassium burned with a vivid flame in its vapour in an open tube, and carbon was deposited; a solution made of the residuum, and saturated with nitric acid, gave a copious precipitate with nitrate of silver. M. Julin then remarks, that the small quantity he possessed, with want of leisure, prevented him from making any further experiments on it, and concludes by comparing it with the chlorides of carbon that have lately been formed.

The small quantity of the substance which, by the kindness of M. Julin, we had at our disposal at that time, was insufficient to enable us satisfactorily to ascertain its nature. We found it mixed with free sulphur, and sulphate and muriate of ammonia. When purified, our first object, in consequence of M. Julin's suggestion, was to compare it with the per chloride of carbon, but it was found entirely distinct from it in its properties.

Since M. Julin's return from the continent, he has very kindly placed some further portions of this substance at our disposal. We have therefore been enabled to continue our experiments, and have come to the very unexpected conclusion of its being another chloride of carbon, in addition to the two, an account of which has been published in the Transactions of the Royal Society for this year.

The substance, after being boiled in solution of potash, washed in water, dried and sublimed, formed beautiful acicular crystals, which appeared to Mr. W. Phillips to be four-sided prisms. They contained no sulphur, and, when dissolved in alcohol or æther, gave no traces of chlorine or muriates by nitrate of silver. They burned in the air with a strong bright flame at a heat below redness, and agreed with the description given by M. Julin of the properties of the substance.

When heated moderately, it sublimed unaltered; but on passing a portion over rock-crystal, heated to bright redness, in a green glass tube, it: was decomposed, charcoal was deposited, and the gas, passed into solution of nitrate of silver, precipitated it, and proved to be chlorine.

A portion was repeatedly sublimed in a small retort filled with chlorine, which was made red-hot in several places; it