300 EXPERIMENTS AND OBSERVATIONS 
choue bottle ; a small receiver was adapted ; and a slight heat 
having been applied, to expel a little of the air, the joining was 
made close by cement. The receiver was surrounded with a 
freezing mixture, and heat was applied by a choffer to the re- 
tort, as far as: could be done, without raising dense vapours, 
Globules of liquid, perfectly limpid, collected pretty copious- 
ly towards the middle and lower part of the neck, and the re- 
ceiver, on being removed from the freezing mixture, was co- 
vered sntawinally with a film of moisture. ‘The globules in the 
neck of the retort were absorbed by a slip of bibulous paper, 
and the quantity was found to amount to 1.2 gr. The recei- 
ver being dried carefully, and weighed, lost by the dissipation 
of the moisture within, 0.4 grain. Distilled water, in which 
the bibulous paper was immersed, was quite acid; it gave no 
sensible turbidness on the addition of ammonia, or of carbo- 
nate of soda, and held dissolved, therefore, merely pure muria- 
tic acid. The mass in’ the retort was of a grey colour, with 
metallic lustre, in loosely agg sregated laminae, somewhat flexi- 
ble. It weighed 114.8 grains. Adding to this increase of 
weight, which the zinc had gained, the weight of the water and 
the hydrogen gas expelled, it gives a consumption of muriatic 
acid gas of about 16.8 grains, equivalent to about 43 cubie 
inches. Supposing the weight of water to be doubled, or near- 
ly so, by saturation with muriatic acid, this gives the product 
of water in the experiment, as equal to nearly one grain; or 
about one-fifth of the whole quantity of combined water, which 
muriatic acid gas is calculated to contain *. 
™ 
® The action of the metals on the muriatic acid gas, taking place in the above 
experiments at a heat comparatively moderate, it occurred to me, that they 
might exert a similar action with no higher heat on the acid, in muriate of am- 
: monia, 
