442 On definite Proportions. 
oxide and 32:7775 of nitric acid; or 100 parts of nitric 
acid saturate 205°1 of protoxide of lead, containing 14°66 
of oxygen: [since this protoxide contains 7°15 per cent. of 
oxygen. “GILB.] 
These two experiments seem to'show, that 100 parts of 
nitric acid saturate as much of a base as contains 144 parts 
of oxygen. But if this acid is composed of 30:5 parts of 
nitrogen* and 69°5 of oxygen, as Gay-Lussac reports in his 
Essay on the combinations of the gaseous bodies, this quan- 
tity of oxygen, 69°5, is not a multiple by any whole num- 
ber of 14°66, but falls between four and five times that 
quantity. If, on the other hand, we consider the nitric 
acid as composed of 100 parts of ammonium and 662 parts 
of oxygen, as I have done, or of 13°12 of ammonium and 
86°88 of oxygen per cent. we have at once 14°66 x 6=87°9, 
and the nitric acid contains six times as much oxygen as 
the base with which it is saturated. The slight difference 
of 1 per cent. between the determinations from the com- 
position of the base-and from the weight of the gases, oc- 
curs also, as we have seen, in the case of the carbonic acid, 
and depends therefore not on an error in principle, but on 
a small inaccuracy in the numbers on which the calculation 
is founded, 
Perhaps it will be objected to me, that although the salts 
here analysed afforded no water of crystallization in their 
decrepitation, they may have retained it so firmly as not to 
have parted with it except together with the acid; and if 
we allowed that they contained exactly so much water of 
crystallization, as to have its oxygen equal to that of the base, 
[according to the law which wil! be more fully explained in 
the Third Continuation, G.] the remaining nitric acid, if 
considered as composed of nitrogen and oxygen, would 
contain not quite four times as much oxygen, and if as of 
ammonium and oxygen, exactly five times as much as the 
base. . This objection I shall put to the test in the case of 
the following salt, 
Nitrate of Ammonia. 
According to the view which has been mentioned, this 
salt must be so composed that 100 parts of ammonia satu~ 
rate 267of nitric acid [since for 100 parts of ammonium am- 
monia must contain 88 and the nitric acid 662 parts of oxy- 
gen, G.]. But if we reckon according to the volumes of the 
gaseous component parts, as they are assigned by Gay-Lussac, 
the nitric acid contains for 100 cubic inches of nitrogen 200 
ef oxygen, and ammonia for the samé measure of nitrogen 
30Q 
