830 EXPERIMENTS ON THE RELATION 
compound of muriatic acid and oxygen, as was previously ima- 
gined, and as its name seemed to denote. He accordingly as- 
signed to it the term Chlorine, descriptive of its colour ; a name 
now generally used. 
Chlorine when combined with an equal volume of hydrogen, 
forms Muriatic Acid Gas, the Hydrochloric of Gay Lussac. 
This muriatic acid gas, hygrometrically dry, unites with its own 
bulk of dry ammoniacal gas, to constitute the dry pulverulent 
solid called Sal Ammoniac. Hence this saline body is ulti- 
mately composed of chlorine and hydrogen, for its acid; and 
of azote and hydrogen, for its base. By comparing the weights 
of muriatic acid and ammoniacal gases, in equal volumes, we 
obtain the proportion of 67.8 muriatic acid gas, to 32.2 ammo- 
nia, for the composition of 100 parts by weight of the solid 
salt. If we saturate liquid muriatic acid with gaseous ammo- 
nia, or with the base of the ammoniacal carbonate, and evapo- 
rate carefully to dryness, we find the resulting salt to have pre- 
cisely the same constitution, namely, in 100 parts, 51 of dry 
muriatic acid, equivalent to 67.8 of the acid gas, and the re- 
mainder 32.2 ammonia. This concurrence of results, whatever 
way the salt may be obtained, is fully demonstrated in my re- 
searches on the ammoniacal salts, (Annals of Philosophy for 
September 1817), and proves it to be a substance of very uni- 
form and determinate composition. 
Those chemists who consider chlorine to be oxymuriatic 
acid, must suppose, when a volume of it weighing 44.13 unites 
with an equal volume of hydrogen, weighing 1.32, that, in the 
resulting hydrochloric or muriatic acid gas = 45.45, this hy- 
drogen exists combined with 10.00 of oxygen, its saturating 
quantity, forming 11.32 of constituent water. In this view, 
uriatic acid gas, like gaseous, sulphuric, and nitric acids, con- 
tains water as an essential element. There seems to be no 
violation 
