[ 190 J 
XXXII. On a new detonating Compound, in a Letter from 
Sir Humeury Davy, LL.D. &.R.S. to the Right Hon. 
Sir JoserH BANKs, “Bart. KB. P.RS.* 
My Dear Sir, T sin it Fahit to communicate to you, 
and through you to the Royal Society, such circumstances 
as have come to my knowledge respecting a new and a very 
extraordinary detonating compound. T am anxious that 
those circumstances should be made public as speedily as 
possiblé, because experiments upon the substance may be 
connected with very dangerous results; and because I have 
already mentioned the mode of preparing it to many of 
my chemical friends, to whom my experience may be use- 
ful in saving them from danger. 
About the end of September, I received a letter from a 
philosophical gentleman at Paid: on some subjects of 
science, which “contained the following paragraph ; 
53 Vous avez sans doute appris, Monsieur, la découverte 
qu’on a faite a Paris il y a prés d’un an, d’une combinaison 
gaz azote et de chlorine, qui a l’apparence dune huile 
plus pesante que Peau, et qui détonne avec toute la violence 
des métaux fulmimans ala simple chaleur de Ja main, ce 
qui a privé dun ceil et d’un doigt Pauteur de cette décou- 
verte. Cette détonnation a lieu par la simple séparation 
des deux gaz, comme celle de Ja combinatson d’oxigéne et 
de chlorine ; fl y a également beaucoup de lumiére et de la 
chaleur produites dans cette détonnation, ot un liquide se 
décompose en deux gaz.” 
The letter contained no account of the mode of prepara- 
tion of this substance, nor any other details respecting it. 
So curious and important a result could not fail to in- 
terest_ me, particularly as I have long been engaged in ex- 
periments on the action of azote and chlorme, without 
‘gaining any decided proofs of their power of combining 
with each other. J perused with avidity the different 
French chemical and physical journals, especially Les An- 
nales de Chimie and Le Journal de Physique, of which the 
complete series of last year have arrived in this country, in 
hopes of discovering some detail respecting the preparation 
of this sub tance ; bat in vain, | dewassinable-to find any 
thing relative to it in these publications, or in the Moniteur. 
It was evident from the notice, that it could not be 
formed in any operations in which heat is concerned; I 
therefore thought of aliempting to combine azote and 
* from the Philosophical Transactions for 1813, part i. 
chlorine 
