HISTORICAL SKETCH. 



Wright regarded the fluorine and chlorine as being combined, and the 

 ammonia as probably existing together with some of the carbon dioxide in 

 the form of ammonium carbonate. The amount of water obtained, calcu- 

 lated as vapor, was slightly more than twice the volume of carbon dioxide. 



Following Wright, Sir James Dewar, 1 in collaboration with Mr. Ansdell, 

 made several more analyses of the meteoritic gases, and then, in an 

 endeavor to discover the source and significance of these gases, directed a 

 series of experiments upon the theory that graphite might be the retentive 

 or generative constituent. Their analyses of the gases from graphites and 

 from the matrix from which graphites have come revealed moderately 

 high volumes. TABLE 3 _ 



Because the quantity of gas yielded by these specimens of graphite was 

 so considerable, Dewar proceeded to ascertain whether graphite could 

 absorb the different gases when allowed to stand in each of them for 12 

 hours. His experiments with the celestial graphite which had previously 

 been deprived of its gases indicated that little or no absorption had taken 

 place. "It is therefore evident," says Dewar, "that the large quantities 

 of gas occluded in celestial meteorites can not be explained by any special 

 absorptive power of this variety of carbon." Attempts to split up the 

 hydrogen-producing compound with strong nitric acid and also to wash 

 out, with ether, the possible carbonaceous source of the methane, appeared 

 to show that the hydrogen existed in a very stable compound, and that, 

 while the ether lessened the quantity of methane which the graphite after- 

 wards furnished, it did not dissolve out all the carbonaceous compounds 

 present, or else that the marsh-gas was subsequently formed during the 

 heating of the material. 



Dewar's analyses of gases from stony meteorites, which are in accord 

 with Wright's results, are given in table 4. 



TABLE 4. 



An analysis of the gas extracted from the Orgueil meteorite revealed 

 much sulphur dioxide, which Professor Dewar believed to have been derived 



1 Dewar and Ansdell, Proc. Roy. Inst., vol. 11 (1884-1886), p. 332 and pp. 541-552. 



