Note 19 — Chapter VI · TTHE COMPOUNDS OF NITROGEN WITH HYDROGEN AND OXYGEN

Isambert studied the dissociation of ammoniacal compounds, as we have seen in Note 8, and showed that at low temperatures many salts are able to combine with a still greater amount of ammonia, which proves an entire analogy with hydrates; and as in this case it is easy to isolate the definite compounds, and as the least possible tension of ammonia is greater than that of water, therefore the ammoniacal compounds present a great and peculiar interest, as a means for explaining the nature of aqueous solutions and as a confirmation of the hypothesis of the formation of definite compounds in them; for these reasons we shall frequently refer to these compounds in the further exposition of this work.