although all the other salts of perchloric acid are very soluble and even deliquesce in the air. The perchlorates, although they contain more oxygen than the chlorates, are decomposed with greater difficulty, and even when thrown on ignited charcoal give a much feebler deflagration than the chlorates. Sulphuric acid (at a temperature not below 100°) evolves volatile and to a certain extent stable perchloric acid from potassium perchlorate. Neither sulphuric nor any other acid will further decompose perchloric acid as it decomposes chloric acid. Of all the acids of chlorine, perchloric acid alone can be distilled. The pure hydrate HClO 4 is a colourless and exceedingly caustic substance which fumes in the air and has a specific gravity 1·78 at 15° (sometimes, after being kept for some time, it decomposes with a violent explosion). It explodes violently when brought into contact with charcoal, paper, wood, and other organic substances. If a small quantity of water be added to this hydrate, and it be cooled, a crystallo-hydrate, ClHO 4 ,H 2 O, separates out. This is much more stable, but the liquid hydrate HClO 4 ,2H 2 O is still more so. The acid dissolves in water in all proportions, and its solutions are distinguished for their stability. When ignited both the acid and its salts are decomposed, with the evolution of oxygen.
On comparing chlorine as an element not only with nitrogen and carbon but with all the other non-metallic elements (chlorine has so little analogy with the metals that a comparison with them would be superfluous), we find in it the following fundamental properties of the halogens or salt-producers.
With metals chlorine gives salts (such as sodium chloride, &c.); with hydrogen a very energetic and monobasic acid HCl, and the same quantity of chlorine is able by metalepsis to replace the hydrogen; with oxygen it forms unstable oxides of an acid character.
These properties of chlorine are possessed by three other elements, bromine, iodine, and fluorine. They are members of one natural family.
Each representative has its peculiarities, its individual properties and points of distinction, in combination and in the free state—otherwise they would not be independent elements; but the repetition in all of them of the same chief characteristics of the family enables one more quickly to grasp all their various properties and to classify the elements themselves.
In order to have a guiding thread in forming comparisons between the elements, attention must however be turned not only to their points of resemblance but also to those of their properties and characters in which they differ most from each other.
And the atomic weights of the elements must be considered as their most elementary property, since this is a quantity which is most firmly established, and must be taken account of in all the reactions of the element. The halogens have the following atomic weights—
F = 19, Cl = 35·5, Br = 80, I = 127.
All the properties, physical and chemical, of the elements and their corresponding compounds must evidently be in a certain dependence on this fundamental point, if the grouping in one family be natural.