7. In many trials, these results always occurred, and sometimes a peculiar odour was perceived, at first thought to be owing to arsenic, but it was incomparably feebler, and somewhat resembled that of radishes.[72]
8. Zinc, iron, and tin, plunged into separate portions of the nitro-muriatic solution, precipitated abundantly a black flocculent substance.
9. On charcoal before the blow-pipe, this substance was very combustible, with a blue flame, and was completely dissipated in the form of white oxyd, with the above smell.
10. Some of it was obtained on the charcoal in metallic globules; it was a brittle metal, white, with a tinge of red, and foliated, but not so distinctly as bismuth and antimony.
11. The filters on which the white oxyd had been deposited, burned almost with explosion, nearly as rapidly as if they had been soaked with nitrate of potash, or of ammonia, and the characteristic blue flame appeared while the burning lasted.
12. Other experiments were made upon the metal, (not the oxyd.) It gave to strong sulphuric acid, (simply by standing in it in the cold) an amethystine colour, which disappeared as the acid grew weaker, by attracting water from the air.
13. With nitric acid it formed a colourless solution, not decomposed by water.
14. It did not dissolve in muriatic acid, till a few drops of nitric acid were added.
15. The white oxyd heated with charcoal in a small coated recurved glass tube, afforded brilliant metallic globules, which rose by distillation, collected in the bend of the tube, and resembled drops of quicksilver, except that they were solid.