574 Analysis of Books, fyc. 



1812. It is dedicated to Lady Davy, to whom he offers it ' as a 

 pledge that he shall continue to pursue science with unabated 

 ardour.' Upon this work Dr. Paris has offered some remarks, for 

 which we regret we have not space. He observes that 



'Although it bears the title of " Elements," its plan and execution are 

 rather adapted to the adept than the tyro in science ; and though it 

 has not perhaps announced any discoveries which had not been pre- 

 viously communicated to the Royal Society, it has brought together his 

 original results, and arranged them in one simple digested plan it has 

 given coherence to disjointed facts, and has exhibited their mutual bear- 

 ings upon each other, and their general relations to previously established 

 truths. Very shortly after the publication, it was asserted that the work 

 could never be completed upon the plan on which it had commenced, 

 which was little less than a system of chemistry, in which all the facts 

 were to be verified by the author ; an undertaking too gigantic for the 

 most intrepid and laborious experimentalist to accomplish. There was 

 too much truth in the remark the life of the author has closed the 

 work remains unfinished. 1 



The volume extends only to the general laws of chemical 

 Changes, and to the primary combinations of undecompounded 

 bodies. 



In October, 1812, he received a letter from M. Ampere, informing 

 him that a compound of chlorine and azote had been discovered at 

 Paris, a fluid which exploded by the heat of the hand ; and that the 

 discovery had cost the author an eye and a finger. M. Ampere 

 gave him no details as to the mode of combining them, but his own 

 sagacity led him to the course to be pursued, and Mr. Children 

 having suggested to him that Mr. James Burton, on exposing 

 chlorine to a solution of nitrate of ammonia, had observed the 

 formation of a yellow oil, which he had not been able to collect, 

 Davy availed himself of the hint, and obtained the fluid in question. 

 On exposing it to heat, the tube was shivered to atoms by its explo- 

 sion, and he received a wound in the transparent cornea of the eye, 

 which was followed by inflammation, and disabled him from pursuing 

 his inquiry. In the following July, he was again wounded in the head 

 and hands in attempting its analysis by the action of mercury, but 

 having taken the precaution of defending his face by a plate of glass 

 attached to a proper cap, no serious consequence ensued. By using 

 smaller quantities, and recently distilled mercury, he succeeded 

 in obtaining results without any violent action : the mercury united 

 with the chlorine, and azote was disengaged, from which he was 

 enabled to conclude that it was composed of four volumes of chlo- 

 rine and one volume of azote. He suggested the name of azotane; 

 but his nomenclature of the compounds of chlorine not having been 

 adopted, the substance is denominated chloride of nitrogen. The 

 results of these experiments were communicated to the Royal 

 Society in two successive papers. In another paper, read July 8, 

 1813, he establishes, by satisfactory experiments, that the base of 

 fluoric acid is a highly energetic body, not hitherto obtained in an 



