29({ Mr. Kane on the Existence of 



I should have done so ; but I would ask that gentleman, how 

 he will reconcile the above facts with his theories. 



Mr. Mac Mullen next proceeds to state that the same effects 

 take place when red lead or when the peroxide of lead were 

 used, as when manganese. We shall not, therefore, notice 

 them, more particularly as the explanation of one is satisfactory 

 for both. 



Reasoning on the thus proved existence of chlorine in red 

 lead ; and reflecting on the nature of the circumambient agents 

 in the manufacture of that article, which he estimates as four, 

 viz.j oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, and hydrogen, he jumps to the 

 settling, as he himself says, *' of a question, on which the 

 highest powers of the first philosophers of the age have been 

 literally exhausted," — the composition of chlorine. 



Omitting the numerical calculations of the composition of 

 chlorine from the atomic weights of its constituents, and which 



p. Nit. p.Carb. 

 prim, oxygen. p. azote. p. carbon. p. chlor. Oxide oxide, p. chlor. 



he settles as 2 = 16 + 1= 14 + i := 6 = 36 or 22 + 14 = 36, 

 I shall proceed to the experiments by which he, I believe, in- 

 tended to support it. 



Into a Papin's digester he put salt, manganese, and sulphuric 

 acid diluted with water ; he then placed in the digester a glass 

 vessel, containing manganese and hot sulphuric acid. The 

 cover being put on, the oxygen and chlorine passed out through 

 a tobacco-pipe, at the end of which they were inflamed. A 

 bell glass held over the flame was found to contain water, mu- 

 riatic acid, chloric acid, and euchlorine, but no carbonic acid. 

 Mr. Mac Mullen satisfied himself of the absence of carbonic 

 acid, as the vapour did not precipitate lime water ; but he 

 forgets to state how he detected chloric acid and euchlorine. 

 He allows before that he could not prove chloric acid to exist 

 in manganese, yet he avers that he found it as a product of this 

 combustion, but without saying how. In what manner he de- 

 tected euchlorine in such an apparatus, I am at a loss to 

 conceive. 



To investigate the truth of this experiment I made the fol- 

 lowing: Having obtained a sufficient quantity of chlorine and 

 of oxygen, a bladder was filled with the gases mixed in equal 

 volumes ; q, piece of thermometer tube was then fitted to the 



