150 Royal Socitty. — Chemistry. 



panied with a well engraved plate. This dissertation being 

 well known to every curious mechanician, we notice it only to 

 correct an error which has been so often relocated as to have 

 received very t:!,"encral credit — that when A'r. Bramah applied to 

 Parliament i'or an extension of the term of his patent, two gen- 

 tlemen, examined as witnesses against'the grant, demonstrated 

 to the committee that Mr. Bramah's lock might be picked with 

 a piece of wood and a quill. Prefixed to this edition is an ex- 

 tract from the Minutes taken before the committee. — Mr. George 

 Hawks being asked, "When von made that key of wood, had 

 you not the real key in your possession, from wiiich vou copied 

 it ?" replied '•' Yes." — " Does the witness mean to say that he 

 could make that key of wood, in such a maimer as to open the 

 lock, without having the real key to copv from?" — " I don't 

 MEAN TO SAY SO." — Mr. Henry Dovvner, cross-cxamined — "Had 

 you not the real key in your possession when you made what 

 you call the mutilated key ? and did not yon copy it ?" — " I had, 

 AND 1 DID COPY IT." — The extract is signed " Hen. Coles, 

 Committee Clerk, May 24, 1815." 



XXX. Intelligence and Miscellaneous Articles. 



KOYAL SOCIETY. 



JLn our report of the proceedings of this learned body for May 

 last, we briefly allnded to a paper by Sir H. Davy, On a Com- 

 pound of Oxygen and Chlorine. This compound, we nov/ find, 

 consists of two parts in volume of oxygen and one part in volume 

 of chlorine. It is a permanent gas, very soluble in water, of a 

 bright yellow colour, detonates, and is resolved into its two 

 constituent ))arts by the heat of boiling water. It has not acid 

 properties; from which it may be concluded that the acid j)ro- 

 perties of the hvper-oxygenized muriatic acid are owing to com- 

 bined hydrogen. According to the doctrine of definite propor- 

 tions, this new gas may be regarded as composed of one pro- 

 portion of chlorine, and four proportions of oxygen. 



M. Sementini, Professor of Chemistry at Naples, stated in a 

 recent Italian journal, that "the yellow tincture of ciuciima, 

 which is changed into a red colour bv the alkalies, undergoes the 

 same change by the action of the phosphoric acid." M. Guy- 

 ton Morvean thus controverts this conclusion in the Annules de 

 Chiinie: — " The author of this observation must have been led 

 into an error by some accident. A phosphoric acid which red- 

 dened strongly even the blue paper in which sugar loaves are 



wrapped. 



