The most common of these sulphides is cobaltous sulphide, CoS, which occurs naturally as syepoorite, and can be artificially prepared by heating cobaltous oxide with sulphur, or by fusing anhydrous cobalt sulphate with barium sulphide and common salt.
It may be obtained as a dark brown amorphous powder by placing a mixture of io parts of the roughly powdered oxide with 6 parts of metallic sodium in a red-hot crucible, and covering the mixture with a layer of well-dried common salt.
Obviously no more than this is possible until physiologists are able to state much more precisely than at present what is the influence of common salt on the plants of salt-marshes, of the action of calcium carbonate on plants of calcareous soils, and of the action of humous compounds on plants of fens and peat moors.
The effect of common salt on the metabolism of plants is not understood.
He showed further, that the increase of common salt in the soil is correlated with a reduction in the number and size of the chlo,-oplastids, and therefore in the amount of chlorophyll.