448 | New Experiments on some of 
nitrate of silver by phosphorous acid, as I am sure I was. M. 
Berzelius does not state how he prepared his liquid chloride of 
phosphorus ; but M. Dulong, who objects to my process by cor- 
rosive sublimate, and employs, instead of it, the action of 
chlorine on phosphorus in forming his fluid, must have been 
exposed to other sources of error, “He speaks of acting on dry 
phosphorus by dry chlorine ; but it must be always extremely 
difficult to free a gas that cannot be kept over mercury, of all 
its vapour; and as perchloride always forms during the action of 
phosphorus on chlorine, a part of which produces a fluid, and 
easily volatile hydrate with water, and soluble in 11 proportions 
in the liquid chloride, this precess must be very liable to error. 
I have never been able to form the perchloride, even from chlo- 
rine slowly passed through muriate of lime, without producing 
a small quantity of liquid hydrate of perchloride, which, when 
the solid perchloride was converted into liquid by more phospho- 
rus, rose in vapour with it, and which, containing nearly a 
double quantity of chlorine, (for the water forms a very small 
part of it,) occasions the precipitation of a much larger quan- 
tity of horn silver than the pure chloride formed from corrosive 
sublimate. 
These various experiments on the combination of phosphorus 
with oxygen and chlorine, sufficiently agree with each other to 
afford the means of determining the proportion in which phos- 
phorus combines with other bodies, or its equivalent number 
considered as an element. 
If the absorption of oxygen be considered as offering the 
data, and phosphoric acid be supposed to consist of two propor- 
tions of oxygen, and one of phosphorus, the number repre- 
senting the proportion in which phosphorus combines, will be 
22:3. If phosphoric acid be considered as consisting of four 
proportions of oxygen, the proportional number or equivalent 
of phosphorus will be 44°6. 
If the absorption of chlovine in forming phosphorane he made 
the datum, the number will be the same, 222, or the double, 
44:4, If the quantity of horn silver formed from the liquid 
chloride, taking the mean of all the experiments, be assumed as 
the datum, the number would be 23°5, or the double 47: the 
mean of all these proportions is 22°6, or the double 45°25; or 
taking away decimals, 45. 
In referring to the analyses which have been made of the dif- 
ferent combinations of phosphoric acid, for the purpose of ascer- 
taining if they correspond with this number, I found the data 
so uncertain and so discordant, that it was impossible to form 
any conclusions from them. The phosphate of soda, as is well 
known, has alkaline properties; yet, according to M. Berzelius, 
it 
