1835.] on Spirits. 225 



all events may serve to draw the attention of others more 

 qualified to the subject ; we have been induced to arrange 

 them as in the following papers, and shall in the present, 

 as preliminary, confine ourselves to the composition of 

 spirits of different specific gravities, a fact necessary to be 

 accurately ascertained before proceeding to an examination 

 of the processes by which they are produced. 



Various tables of this kind have, indeed, been published in 

 the continental periodicals, but besides differing from each 

 other, and being drawn up for temperatures rendering a 

 calculation, and that from uncertain data, necessary to re- 

 duce them to that usually employed in this country, the 

 specific gravities are only given the length of three figures, 

 a degree of accuracy scarcely sufficient even for practical 

 purposes. 



The very elaborate tables of Mr. Gilpin published in the 

 transactions of the Royal Society for the year 1794, the 

 result of four years experimenting, though highly valuable 

 in themselves, from the inconvenient form in which they 

 are drawn up, and the unfortunate choice of a compound in 

 place of pure alcohol as the standard; the calculations 

 necessary in making use of them in practice are so tedious 

 and complicated, as to have rendered them of but very little 

 practical utility. 



From the care and attention bestowed on these experi- 

 ments, the accuracy of the results can hardly be questioned ; 

 hence, any attempts at repetition, on the same extended 

 scale at least, and probably with an inferior apparatus, 

 would to say the least of it be quite superfluous ; a very few 

 carefully performed experiments being quite sufficient to 

 afford data for re-calculating the whole of these experiments 

 if necessary, and arranging them in a really useful form, 

 though a very small part is all that will be required for our 

 present purpose. 



These experiments have merely consisted in making 

 mixtures of alcohol and water, and deducing from the 

 specific gravity of the compound, the composition of Mr. 

 Gilpin's standard spirit. 



Of the ultimate composition of anhydrous alcohol, the 

 number of distinguished chemists who have made it the 



VOL. I. Q 



