80 



V. On a new Gaseous Compound of Carbon and Hydrogen. By Edmund 

 Davy, F.R.S. M.R.I.A., &c., Professor of Chemistry to the Royal Duhlin 

 Society. 



Read 26th June, 1837. 



1 communicated to a Scientific Meeting of the Royal Dublin Society, and 

 also to the last Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of 

 Science, held at Bristol in August, 1836, a brief notice of a new gaseous com- 

 pound of carbon and hydrogen, I had previously obtained ; in order to secure 

 my claim to priority of discovery, and with the intention of subsequently sub- 

 mitting to the Royal Irish Academy a fuller and more detailed account of it. 

 Circumstances, which it is unnecessary to mention, have hitherto prevented me 

 from executing this design, which I shall now do myself the honor of carrying 

 into effect. 



In attempting to make potassium, on a large scale, in an iron bottle, by what 

 has been called Brunner's method, i. e. by strongly heating a mixture of pre- 

 viously calcined cream of tartar, and about ^ of dry charcoal powder, I failed ; 

 and instead of potassium, I obtained only a very limited quantity of a black 

 substance, which choked up a part of the iron tube connected with the iron bottle. 

 This black substance was hastily transferred to a dry bottle, which was then well 

 corked. A small part of it was in, powder, but the greater part in little lumps, 

 which though apparently similar to the. eye, yet produced different effects in 

 water ; for whilst some of those lumps slowly decomposed water, evolving only 

 vei'y minute globules of gas ; others decomposed that fluid very rapidly, pro- 

 ducing all the gas they would furnish, with nearly the same facility as potassium 

 would have done, under similar circumstances. The gas, thus slowly produced, 

 was on examination found to be hydrogen ; whilst the gas rapidly evolved, pos- 

 sessed pi'operties so different from any other known gas, as to entitle it to be 



