Note 284 — MINERAL POISONS.

In the Philosophical Magazine for December, 1821, a communication is to be found from a Mr. Murray, which would have been too ridiculous to require notice, had it not involved a question connected with the habitudes of corrosive sublimate and iron, which might possibly occasion error. After stating that certain metallic solutions may be decomposed through the agency of magnetism, he says, a solution of corrosive sublimate may be thus made to yield metallic mercury, by introducing into it a bar of magnetised iron! He had not the wit to inquire whether unmagnetised iron might not prove equally powerful as a decomposing agent.