ft9 An Account of some new TLxperhnents 



tions of the substances concerned in these experiments would 

 have been such as to have produced the iiisohible and fixed salts 

 of lead, the sulphate in the first case, and tlic carljonate in the 

 second. 



I shall not enter into any discussion upon the experiments in 

 which water is said to be produced by the action of muriatic gas 

 on ammonia ; there is, I believe, no ciiliglitened and candid 

 person, who has witnessed the results of processes in which !:;rge 

 quantities of muriate of ammonia, made by t!ie combination of 

 the gases in close vessels, have been distilled, without being sa- 

 tisfied, that there is no more moisture present, than the minute 

 quantity which is knov,n to exist in the com])ound vapours dif- 

 fused through ammoniacal and muriatic acid gaser-, which can- 

 not be considered either as essential to the existence of the 

 gases, or as chemically combined with them*. 



One of the first experiments that I made, with the hope of 

 detecting oxvgen in chlorine, was by acting upon it by am- 

 monia, when I found that no water was formed, and that the 

 results were merely muriate of ammonia and azote f; and the 

 driest muriate of annnonia, I find, when heated with potassium, 

 converts it into muriate of potassa; which result would be im- 

 possible on the hypothesis of oxymuriatic gas being a compound 

 of oxygen ; for, if there was a separation of water dming the 

 formation of the muriate, the same oxygen could not be sup- 

 posed to be detached in water, and yet likewise to remain so as 

 to form part of a neutral salt. 



If water had been really formed during the action of chlorine 

 on ammonia, the result would have been a most important one: 

 it would have proved either that chlorine or azote was a com- 

 pound, and contained oxygen, or that both contained this sub- 

 stance ; but it would not have proved the existence of oxygen 

 in chlorine, till it had been shown that the azote of the am- 

 monia was unchanged in the operation. 



Some authors continue to write and speak Avith scepticism 

 on the subject, and demand stronger evidence of chlorine being 

 xmdecompounded. These evidences it is impossible to give. 

 It has resisted all attempts at decomposition. In this respect, 

 it agrees with gold, and silver, and hydrogen, and oxygen. Per- 

 sons may doubt, whether these are elementaty bodies; but it is 

 not philosophical to doubt, whetiier they have t)ot been resolved 

 into other forms of matter. 



'^ Dr. Hfiiry found it very difficult to free ammonia from the aqneom 

 vapour existiiii; in it by l-vdrate of potassa ; and probably the hydrattd niu- 

 riatic vapour wiiich I liave delected in muriatic acid ga;, by a freczii)g 

 mixture, is not decomposable by muriate of lime. 



t Philosopliical Transuctiou? for 1810. 



