

PHILOSOPHICAL 

 TRANSACTIONS. 



I. On a new detonating Compound, in a Letter from Sir Humphry 

 Davy, LL,D. F.R.S, to the Right Honourable Sir Joseph 

 Banks, Bart. K. B. P. R, S. 



Read November 5, 1812. 



My Dear Sir, 



1 THINK it right to communicate to you, and through you to 

 the Royal Society, such circumstances as have come to my 

 knowledge respecting a new and a very extraordinary deto- 

 nating compound. I am anxious that those circumstances 

 should be made public as speedily as possible, because experi- 

 ments upon the substance may be connected with very dan- 

 gerous results; and because I have already mentioned the 

 mode of preparing it to many of my chemical friends, to whom 

 my experience may be useful in saving them from danger. 



About the end of September, I received a letter from a phi- 

 losophical gentleman at Paris on some subjects of science, 

 which contained the following paragraph : 



" Vous avez sans doute appris. Monsieur, la decouverte 

 qu'on a faite a Paris il y a pres d'un an, d'une combinaison de 

 gaz azote et de chlorine, qui a Tapparence d'une huile plus 



MDCCCXIII. B 



