2. Salts formed by the peculiar acid with bases.—These compounds may be formed, either by acting on the bases or their carbonates by the pure acid, obtained as already described; or the impure acid in solution may be used, the salts resulting being afterwards freed from sulphates, by solution in alcohol. It is however proper to mention that another acid, composed of the same elements, is at the same time formed with the acid in question, in small, but variable proportions. The impure acid used, therefore, should be examined as to the presence of this body, in the way to be directed when speaking of the barytic salts; and such specimens as contain very little or none of it should be selected.
Potash forms with the acid a neutral salt, soluble in water and alcohol, forming colourless solutions. These yield either transparent or white pearly crystals, which are soft, slightly fragile, feel slippery between the fingers, do not alter by exposure to air, and are bitter and saline to the taste. They are not very soluble in water; but they undergo no change by repeated solutions and crystallizations, or by long-continued ebullition. The solutions frequently yield the salt in acicular tufts, and they often vegetate, as it were, by spontaneous evaporation, the salt .creeping over the sides of the vessel, and running to a great distance in very beautiful forms. The solid salt heated in a tube gave off a little water, then some naphtha line; after that a little carbonic and sulphurous acid gases arose, and a black ash remained, containing carbon, sulphate of potash, and sulphuret of potassium. When the salt was heated on platinum foil in the air, it burnt with a dense flame, leaving a slightly alkaline sulphate of potash.
Soda yields a salt in most properties resembling that of potash, —crystalline, white, pearly, and unaltered in the air. I thought that, in it, the metallic taste which frequently occurred with this acid and its compounds was very decided. The action of heat was the same as before.
Ammonia formed a neutral salt imperfectly crystalline, not deliquescent, but drying in the atmosphere. Its taste was saline and cooling. It was readily soluble in water and alcohol. When heated on platinum foil it fused, blackened, burnt with flame, and left a carbonaceous acid sulphate of ammonia, which by further heat was entirely dissipated. Its general habits
