This gas is colourless and transparent, lighter than atmospheric air, and will not support combustion; it has a very pungent but not disagreeable smell. Under certain circumstances it is combustible.
EXPERIMENTS.
1. Take a bottle containing chlorine gas, and invert over its mouth another filled with ammoniacal gas; then if the bottles be held in the hand (guarded by a pair of gloves), and suddenly turned, so that the chlorine be uppermost, the two gases will unite so rapidly that a white flame fills the bottles for an instant.
2. Substitute for the chlorine of the last experiment a bottle of carbonic or hydrochloric acid gas; in either case the gases disappear, and a light white powder settles on the sides of the bottles, being the carbonate or hydrochlorate of ammonia, according to the acid used.
Carbonate of ammonia is the substance sold for “smelling salts;” and the hydrochlorate, or muriate of ammonia, is the salt called “sal ammoniac,” whence the alkaline gas was first obtained, and from which it got its name of ammonia. The salt itself was so called, because it was formerly brought from the deserts near the ruins of the temple of Jupiter Ammon.
This salt is, as has been shown, a compound of muriatic acid gas and ammoniacal gas, containing therefore only three simple elements—hydrogen, chlorine, and nitrogen, all gases, and known only in the gaseous state, its symbol being NH4C2; yet they by union form a solid body, resembling in all essential qualities the salts of potash and soda, which are oxides of known metals. Moreover, if some mercury be placed in a solution of this salt, and subjected to the action of galvanism, the negative pole being applied to the mercury, and the positive to the sal ammoniac, the mercury presently loses its fluidity, increases greatly in size, and in fact presents the same appearance as when it is mixed with some metal, forming what is called an “amalgam.” When the battery ceases to act, a succession of white films forms on the surface of the amalgam, and the mercury soon returns to its original state. How is this to be explained? Some chemists have supposed that there must be a base united to the mercury, and have named this hypothetical substance “ammonium,” to correspond to potassium and sodium, the bases of potash and soda, which resemble ammonia in so many properties. But what is this ammonium? and how is it formed? for hydrogen and nitrogen are simple elementary bodies. Are all metals compounds of gases? and are there but a few elements instead of the 64 now enumerated? This, however, is a difficult question, not fitted for discussion here.
Carbonate of ammonia may be obtained by mixing together powdered chalk (which is a carbonate of lime) and muriate of ammonia, and heating the mixture in close vessels, when the salt in question will rise in fumes, and be condensed in a mass in the upper part of the vessel. It is, however, so largely produced in other manufactures, particularly in gas-works, that there is no necessity to resort to the more expensive and direct method. It is the well-known “smelling salts.”
The only other salt of ammonia worth our notice here is the nitrate, from the destructive distillation of which is obtained the nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, already mentioned.