on various Objects . • 91 



bined.with a metallic substance, tellurium, is opposed to 

 the idea of its being a gaseous metal, and perhaps to the 

 idea that it is simple, or that it exists in its common form 

 in the amalgam of ammonium. The phenomena presented 

 by sulphuretted hydrogen are of the same kind, and lead to 

 similar conclusions. 



Muriatic. acid gas, as I have shown, and as is further 

 proved by the researches of MM. Gay Lussac and Thenard, 

 is a compound of a body unknown in a separate state, and 

 water., The water, I believe, cannot be decompounded, 

 unless a new combination is formed : thus it is not changed 

 by charcoal ignited in the gas by Voltaic electricity ; but 

 it is decompounded by all the metals ; and in these cases 

 hydrogen is elicited, in a manner similar to that in which 

 one metal is precipitated by another; the oxygen being 

 found in the new compound. This, at first view, might 

 be supposed in favour of the idea that hydrogen is a simple 

 substance ; but the same reasoning may be applied to a 

 protoxide as to a metal ; and in the case of the nitromu- 

 riatic acid, when the nitrous acid is decomposed to assist 

 in the formation of a metallic muriate, the body disengaged 

 (nitrous gas) is known to be in a high state of oxyge- 

 nation. 



That nitrogen is not a metal in the form of gas, is al- 

 most demonstrated by the nature of the fusible substance 

 from ammonia, and (even supposing no reference to be 

 made to the experiments detailed in this paper) the general 

 analogy of chemistry would lead to the notion of its being 

 compounded. 



Should it be established by future researches that hvdro- 

 gen is a protoxide of ammonium, ammonia a deutoxide, 

 and nitrogen a tritoxide of the same metal, the theory of 

 chemistry would attain a happy simplicity, and the existing 

 arrangements would harmonize with all the new facts. 

 The class of pure inflammable bases would be metals ca- 

 pable of alloying with each other, and of combining with 

 protoxides. Some of the bases would be known only in 

 combination, those of sulphur, phosphorus*, and of the 



boracic, 



* The electrization of sulphur and phosphorus goes far to prove that 

 they contain combined hydrogen. From the phenomena of the action of 

 potassium upon them in my first experiments, I conceived that they con. 

 tained oxygen, though, as I have stated in the appendix to the last Bakerian 

 lecture, the effect* may he explained on a different supposition. The vivid* 

 ness of the ignition in the process appeared an evidence in favour of their 

 containing oxygen, till I discovered that similar phenomena were produced 

 by the combination of arsenic and tellurium with potassium. In some iate 

 (experiment* on the action of putassium on sulphur and phosphorus, and on 



sulphuretted 



