Chloroform

When chloroform is saturated with fluorine, and subsequently boiled, carbon tetrafluoride, hydrofluoric acid and chlorine are evolved. If a drop of chloroform is agitated in a glass tube with excess of fluorine, a violent explosion suddenly occurs, accompanied by a flash of flame, and the tube is shattered to pieces. The reaction is very lively when fluorine is evolved in the midst of a quantity of chloroform, a persistent flame burns beneath the surface of the liquid, carbon is deposited, and fluorides of hydrogen and carbon are evolved together with chlorine.

Methyl chloride is decomposed by fluorine, even at -23°, with production of a yellow flame, deposition of carbon, and liberation of fluorides of hydrogen and carbon and free chlorine. With the vapor of methyl chloride, as pointed out in the description of the electrolysis, violent explosions occur.

Ethyl alcohol vapor at once takes fire in fluorine gas, and the liquid is decomposed with explosive violence without deposition of carbon. Aldehyde is formed to a considerable extent during the reaction.

Acetic acid and benzene are both decomposed with violence, their cold vapors burn in fluorine, and when the latter is bubbled through the liquids themselves, flashes of flame, and often most dangerous explosions, occur. In the case of benzene, carbon is deposited, and with both liquids fluorides of hydrogen and carbon are evolved. Aniline likewise takes fire in fluorine, and deposits a large quantity of carbon, which, however, if the fluorine is in excess, burns away completely to carbon tetrafluoride.

Such are the main outlines of these later researches of M. Moissan, and they cannot fail to impress those who read them with the prodigious nature of the forces associated with those minutest of entities, the chemical atoms, as exhibited at their maximum, in so far as our knowledge at present goes, in the case of the element fluorine. - Nature.