You don’t happen to know whether he first discovered this mode?—No.
Do you know of any mode of managing any fluid substance, in which arsenic has been mixed, so as to produce arsenic in substance?—By evaporating the solution containing arsenic, and by exposing it to heat in a close vessel, you will produce it in a white solid state; and by mixing the residuum of a solution of arsenic with an inflammable substance, arsenic will be sublimed in its metallic state by the same process.
The result of that experiment would not have deceived any one in the world?—It would not certainly; but there was such a small quantity left, after my other experiments, that it was not tried.
It would have produced it, so that any person would know the thing to be arsenic?—Certainly.
You mix the fluid, in which the arsenic is, with an alkali, when you seek to re-produce the mineral in substance? you mix the solution with an alkali, don’t you?—No; there is no occasion for an alkali.
You put it in solution and expose it to heat?—If the arsenic be in solution, it must be evaporated; and by doing that which I have before stated with the residuum, it will be produced in its metallic state.
With respect to the other tests, do you consider those as conclusive and infallible?—Yes, in the way I used them.
This business, of course, must have made a great bustle in Falmouth, when people first talked about it?—Yes, Sir.
When were you examined before the Coroner?—Upon the same day of the funeral, and on the Thursday preceding. I begged the inquest might be put off for two days, till I had examined the contents of the stomach; and it was put off for two days.
You were examined, I believe, before you made the analyses?—I remember that I was examined on the Thursday as to the appearances I found on the stomach.