1864. | The Royal Institution. 308 
THE ROYAL INSTITUTION OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
Tun scientific lectures at the Royal Institution have been of varied 
interest. In the first, on January 22, Mr. Grove, Q.C., gave an ac- 
count of those curious experiments “On Boiling Water,’ which are 
now well known to all scientific men. Mr. Grove’s experiments are 
confessedly but a continuation of those of M. Donny, of Brussels, who 
found that when water has been deprived of air, it no longer boils in 
the ordinary sense of that word, but exhibits the singular phenomenon 
of an occasional burst of vapour, the water in the intervals attaining a 
temperature higher than 212° Fahr. The principal result of Mr. 
Groye’s investigations goes to prove the almost absolute impossibility 
of depriving water of all air; for however long, and under whatever 
conditions, water is submitted to heat, there is still found in it a very 
minute proportion of nitrogen. The lecturer hinted at some possible 
chemical connection between nitrogen and water, the preponderating 
substances on the surface of our planet, and the possibility of nitrogen 
not being merely the inert diluent it is commonly supposed. 
Simple boiling, in the sense of a liquid expanded by heat into its 
vapour without being decomposed or having permanent gas eliminated 
from it, the lecturer believed to be unknown. Boiling (ebullition), 
therefore, is not the result of merely raising a liquid to a given tem- 
perature, but something much more complex. 
To describe the experiments of Mr. Grove would occupy too much 
space, and we can only indicate the results, which went to show that 
chemical purity is a thing almost unattainable, and that in nature 
everything can be found in anything if carefully sought. Bromine 
when boiled, however long, always yielded oxygen; phosphorus in- 
variably gave phosphuretted hydrogen; and sulphur, sulphuretted 
hydrogen, probably from the decomposition of water contained, which 
might lead to the supposition that a minute portion of oxygen, “hydro- 
gen, or of water is inseparable from these substances, and if boiled to 
absolute dryness, a minute portion of the gas would be left for each 
ebullition. 
Mr. Grove further alluded to the effects of intense heat on simple 
and compound bodies, showing how the latter are decomposed, and the 
former undergo some molecular change, as phosphorus into its allo- 
tropic condition and oxygen into ozone. These facts showed that the 
effects of heat are not so simple as commonly supposed. In by far 
the greater number of cases, possibly in all, it is not mere expansion 
into vapour which is produced, but there is further a chemical or 
molecular change. 
As regards the phenomenon of ebullition, Mr. Grove believes that no 
one has seen this take place without permanent gas being liberated, 
and that what is termed boiling arises from the extrication of a bubble 
of permanent gas, either by chemical decomposition of the liquid, or 
by the separ: ation of some eas associated in minute quantity with the 
liquid, and from which human means have hitherto failed to purge it, 
