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PRUSSIC ACID.

(_For the Mirror_.)

The circumstance of Montgomery's recent suicide in Newgate, has led me
to send you the following remarks upon the nature and properties of that
most violent poison, Prussic acid, with which the unfortunate man
terminated his existence.

Were we to consider the constituent parts and properties of the most
common things we are in the habit of daily using, and their poisonous
and destructive natures, we should recoil at the deadly potion, and
shrink from the loathsome draught we are about to take. That which we
consider the most delicious and exhilarating portion of our common
beverage, porter, contains carbonic acid gas, commonly known by the
"spirit," and which the poor miners dread with the utmost horror, like
the Arabian does the destructive blast of the simoon. Oxalic acid, so
much the fear of those accustomed to the medicine--Epsom salts, is made
from that useful article, _sugar_, by uniting with it a smaller portion,
more than it has naturally, of oxygen gas. The air we breathe contains a
most deadly poison, called by chemists azotic gas, which, by its being
mixed with what is called vital air, (oxygen gas,) becomes necessary to
our existence, as much as the one (vital air or oxygen gas) would be
prejudicial without the other; and _Prussic acid_, the most violent of
all poisons, is contained in the common bitter-almond. But these most
destructive substances are always found combined with others, which
render them often perfectly harmless, and can be separated only by the