Chemkiil Science. 165 



the oxygeii is disengaged without any immediate action on the 

 substance, at least when the oxygenated water is diluted. 



Pure oxygenated water was diluted until it contained only 

 eight times its volume of oxygen, and twenty-two measures of it 

 introduced into a tube filled up with mercury. A small quantity 

 of perfectly clear and white fibrine, recently obtained from blood, 

 was introduced, and immediately the oxygen began to separate. 

 In six minutes the water was perfectly de-oxygenated, and gave 

 no efFervescence with oxide of silver. The gas then measured 

 176 parts ; it contained neither carbonic acid nor nitrogen, but 

 was pure oxygen. The same fibrine, placed many times in con- 

 tact with fresh oxygenated water, still acted in the same way. 



Urea, albumen, fluid or solid, and gelatine, did not separate 

 oxygen from water much oxygenated ; but a portion of the lungs 

 cut in thin pieces and well washed, or of the kidney, or 

 the spleen, disengaged the oxygen as readily as the fibrine. The 

 skin and the substance of veins also possess this property, but 

 in an inferior degree. 



" But since fibrine, the lungs, the kidney, the spleen, c^c, pos- 

 sess, like platinum, gold, and silver, the property of disengaging 

 the oxygen from oxygenated water, it is very probable that all 

 these effects are caused by the same power. Is it unreasonable 

 to suppose, also, that it is by an analogous power that animal 

 and vegetable secretions are caused ? I do not think it is ; 

 one may conceive in this way how an organ, without either ab- 

 sorbing or giving off any thing, may constantly act on a liquid, 

 and convert it into new products. This mode of viewing the 

 subject accords well with some ideas which have been urged 

 lately, and which are rendered, as it were, palpable by the expe- 

 riment described in this note." Annales de Chim. xi. p. 85. 



850, given in the former observations on oxygenated water, as 

 the number of volumes of oxygen which water could be made 

 to take up, appears to be an error in printing ; it should have 

 been 616. (See page 379, Vol. VII.) 



2. Ddphinc, a New Vcgclublc Alkali— Dascnhcii l)y MM. Las- 

 saigni: and Fcneullc in a letter to M. Gay-Lussuc. 



