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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 January 2013
In a Memoir on the Preparation of Paracyanogen submitted to the Royal Society some weeks ago, I laid down the proposition, that two equal and similar molecules may enter into the state of chemical union, the combination produced being indissoluble by every known agent of analysis; and I endeavoured to establish this proposition partly on certain abstract physical considerations, and partly by a series of experiments on the production of paracyanogen by the decomposition of the bicyanide of mercury under pressure and at high temperatures.
page 229 note * Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh for 1840–41.
page 231 note * Op. cit. sect. iii. p. 168, et seq.
page 234 note * Elements of Chemical Philosophy, pp. 478–489.
page 235 note * Op. cit. sect. i. compared with the results given in this section of the present paper.
page 237 note * Traité de Chimie–Berzelius, par Valerius, 1838, p. 426.
page 238 note * The convenient little furnace, here referred to, is described and figured in Dr Cormack's Monthly Journal of Medical Science for March 1841.
page 242 note * The cyanide of potassium employed in the performance of these experiments was partly prepared from the ferrocyanide of potassium by heat, and partly procured from a London manufactory; but in both cases it was ascertained to be completely free of silicic acid.
page 243 note * These products were described in a paper read before the British Association in 1839, and published, in abstract, in vol. ix. of its Transactions. They were described as crystallized carburets; but I distinctly stated that I had not analyzed them, and grounded my conclusion regarding their composition solely on synthetic evidence; and so far I was really in the right, for, although they are siliciurets, their ingredients are carbon and iron. I then believed them to be true carburets, having been misled by the observation, that a mixture of the crystalline and the uncrystalline products gave carbonic acid with oxide of copper, the uncrystallized product being now known to be mere unreduced paracyanide of iron. As my inaugural dissertation was never published (except an unimportant subsection of it), I gratefully acknowledge the honour conferred on it by the Medical Faculty of the University of Edinburgh, by taking this opportunity of stating that the investigation of this process was the main subject of one of the four Prize Theses for 1839.