160 Remarks on P'riesiley’s Analysis 
blish the new theory of calcination, and the compo- 
sition of water. 
It does not seem, that Dr. Priestley has given the 
attention it deserves to the experiment:in which wa- 
ter is decomposed by charcoal, producing inflam- 
mable and carbonic acid gas.* The constitution of 
the carbonic acid being ascertained beyond dispute, 
by the ingenious experiment of Mr. Tennant, we 
cannot be deceived in our conclusion, that water is 
composed of oxygen and hydrogen. 
This certainty of the constituent principles of car- 
bonic acid gas, renders it superfluous to make any 
remark on the appearance of it, when red lead, or 
precipitate per se, are reduced by heating them in 
inflammable air; and its production in respiration. 
The cause of it cannot be mistaken. 
« No inflammable air,” continues our author, 
« can be procured in the process with steam, but by 
means of some substance which has been supposed 
to contain phlogiston.’—But may not this objec- 
tion be retorted with propriety upon the phlogistians, 
by reminding them, that no inflammable air can be 
procured, but when water, or substances contain- 
ing it, is present; and shall we not then have the 
advantage over them, that our argument rests on a 
fact, while theirs is supported only by a supposition? 
Nothing new is offered against the recomposition 
*Traité élémentaire de Chimie, par Lavoisier, chap. vi1te 
