rehithig to Air and Water.. ^o j 



and had loft i lo grains of their weight. As the air ceafed to 

 come a confiderable time before all the water had been tranf- 

 mitted through the tube containing them, I concluded that the 

 air was formed from, the phlogifton contained in the bones, and 

 fo much water as was necefl'ary to give it the form of air. 



This air differs confiderably trom any other kind of inRam- 

 mablc air, being in feveral refpecl:s a medium between that 

 from charcoal and that from iron. It contains about one- fourth 

 of its bulk of uncombined fixed air, but not quite one-tenth 

 intimately combined with the remainder. The water that 

 came over was blue, and pretty ftrongly alkaline, which muft. 

 have been occafioned by the volatile alkali not having been in- 

 tirely expelled from the bones in the former procefs, and its 

 having in part diflblved the copper of the tube in which the 

 experiment was made. 



I fubjecled to the fame procefs a variety of fubftances thaf 

 are fald not to contain phlogiflon, but I was never able to pro- 

 ciwe inflammable air by means of them ; which ftrengthens 

 the hypothefis of the principal element in the conftitution of 

 this air having been derived from thefubfiance fuppofed to con- 

 tain phlogifton, and therefore that phlogifton is a real fub- 

 flance, capable of aiTuming. the form of air by means of water 

 and heat. 



The experiments above-mentioned relating to Iron were made 

 with that kind which is inalleahk ; but 1 had the fame refult 

 when I made ufe of fmall nails of caji iron, except that thefe 

 were firmly faftened together after the experiment, the furfaces 

 of them being cryftallized, and the cryftals mdxing with each 

 ether, fo that it was with great difficulty that they could be 

 got out of the tube after the experiment, and in general the 

 fclid parts of the nails were, broken before they were feparated 



from 



