142 Professor Moll an the inflammation of Phosphorus. 



Appareils Chimiques du Musee de Teyler, No. 10, p. 40. 

 This was repeated in the Annales de Chimie, T. xxi p. 158, 

 and in German in Gren's neiies Journal der Physik, T. iii. p. 

 96. Mr Van Marum's experiment was this, that phosphorus, 

 lightly wrapped in dry cotton, or in cotton powdered with re- 

 sin, would inflame in vacuo of a good air-pump. 



In 1801, the late Dr Van Bemmelen published an account 

 of the repetition of Dr Van Marum's experiments. He found, 

 however, that phosphorus powdered with resin, or sulphur, 

 without being wrapped in cotton, would inflame equally well, 

 and that the experiment succeeds also when phosphorus is cover- 

 ed with volatile oil of cloves. But neither Dr Van Marum, 

 nor his friend Dr Van Bemmelen could succeed in inflaming 

 phosphorus, not covered by or wrapped in some other sub- 

 stance ; this appears to have been effected by the transatlantic- 

 philosophers, according to the very brief account of their pro- 

 ceedings given in the Edinburgh Journal of Science. Van 

 Bemmelen's tract was in part printed in German in 1828, in the 

 lateProfessor Gilbert's Annalen der Physik, neue folge, T. xxix 

 p. 268. Nearly at the same time in 1827, another paper, on 

 the same subject, was published in Dutch by a clergyman of the 

 name of Koning, and this tract, to which a golden medal was 

 awarded by the Zealand Society of Arts and Sciences, is to be 

 found in the second part of the fourth volume, of their Transac- 

 tions. (Nteuive Verhandelingcn van Zeeuwsch Genootschap. 

 4de deel, 2de stuk.) I have seen the experiment frequently re- 

 peated in public lectures, I often repeated it myself, but I never 

 saw or heard of a satisfactory explanation of so uncommon a phe- 

 nomenon. This difficulty of accounting for the result was per- 

 haps the cause why the experiment was scarcely ever mention- 

 ed in any book on natural philosophy or chemistry ; and except 

 in Holland, it does not appear that the experiment was much 

 noticed or even repeated. The thing appeared almost forgotten, 

 when Mr Berzelius was struck by the abstract of Bemmelen's 

 experiments in Gilbert's Annals of Physics ; of this abstract 

 another abstract was made in Mr Berzelius's very valuable year- 

 ly account of the state and progress of natural science ; from 

 thence it gradually penetrated into almost all the scientific 

 journals of Europe. As, however, Mr Berzelius had made 



