after the separation of the water, a solid substance remains behind, so that by further heating it acquires a solid form. This is seen most clearly in crystals of sugar of lead or lead acetate, which melt in their water of crystallisation at a temperature of 56·25°, and in so doing begin to lose water. On reaching a temperature of 100° the sugar of lead solidifies, having lost all its water; and then at a temperature of 280°, the anhydrous and solidified salt again melts.67
It is most important to recognise in respect to the water of crystallisation that its ratio to the quantity of the substance with which it is combined is always a constant quantity.
However often we may prepare copper sulphate, we shall always find 36·14 p.c. of water in its crystals, and these crystals always lose four-fifths of their water at 100°, and one-fifth of the whole amount of the water contained remains in the crystals at 100°, and is only expelled from them at a temperature of about 240°.
What has been said about crystals of copper sulphate refers also to crystals of every other substance, which contain water of crystallisation.
It is impossible in any of these cases to increase either the relative proportion of the salt or of the water, without changing the homogeneity of the substance.
If once a portion of the water be lost—for instance, if once efflorescence takes place—a mixture is obtained, and not a homogeneous substance, namely a mixture of a substance deprived of water with a substance which has not yet lost water—i.e. decomposition has already commenced.
This constant ratio is an example of the fact that in chemical compounds the quantity of the component parts is quite definite; that is, it is an example of the so-called definite chemical compounds.
They may be distinguished from solutions, and from all other so-called indefinite chemical compounds, in that at least one, and sometimes both, of the component parts may be added in a large quantity to an indefinite chemical compound, without destroying its homogeneity, as in solutions, whilst it is impossible to add any one of the component parts to a definite chemical compound without destroying the homogeneity of the entire mass.
Definite chemical compounds only decompose at a certain rise in temperature; on a lowering in temperature they do not, at least with very few exceptions, yield their components like solutions which form ice or compounds with water of crystallisation.
This leads to the assumption that solutions contain water as water,68 although it may sometimes be in a very small quantity.
Therefore solutions which are capable of solidifying completely (for instance, crystallo-hydrates capable of melting) such as the compound of 84½ parts of sulphuric acid, H2SO4, with 15½ parts of water, H2O, or H2SO4,H2O (or H4SO5), appear as true definite chemical compounds.
If, then, we imagine such a definite compound in a liquid state, and admit that it partially decomposes in this state, separating water—not as ice or vapour (for then the system would be heterogeneous, including substances in different physical states), but in a liquid form, when the system will be homogeneous—we shall form an idea of a solution as an unstable, dissociating fluid state of equilibrium between water and the substance dissolved.