Two years before coming to Japan, Divers reported an important paper on "The existence and Formation of Salts of Nitrous Oxide", which he elaborated in Japan in 1884 to establish the composition of silver hyponitrite as (AgNO)x, against the formula Ag5N5O5 asserted by Berthelot and Ogier. In 1885 he discarded the work by Georg Ludwig Carius, according to which thionyl chloride formed by the action of phosphorus pentachloride on inorganic sulfites was regarded as a direct product of the reaction and which formed the only experimental evidence in favour of the symmetrical constitution of the sulfites. Divers demonstrated that thionyl chloride was instead