Page:Transactions of the Geological Society, 1st series, vol. 1.djvu/252

 soda; but the circumference was strewed with numerous and perfectly regular crystals of muriat of soda.

3. This saline mass being dissolved in water the solution had the following properties:

a. It was neither acid nor alkaline.

b. Its most obvious taste was that of muriat of soda.

c. It formed copious precipitates with nitrat of barytes, nitrat of silver, and nitrat of lime.

d. Oxymuriat of platina, oxalat of ammonia, and prussiat of potash, produced no precipitate whatever.

Therefore the only salts contained in this solution were sulphat of soda, and muriat of soda.

4. As to the proportions of those two salts, it would have been easy to ascertain them by precipitating their acids. But it occurred to me that the sulphat of ammonia formed in the solution by the ammoniacal salts which had been introduced for the precipitation of the earths, had probably reacted upon the muriat of soda when