t^o Sir H. Davy on the Substances produced 



Now, if there had existed oxygen combined with an inflam- 

 mable basis in the fluate of ammonia, it might have been 

 expected to have been separated, or at least to have formed a 

 new combination during the action of potassium upon the 

 fluate of ammonia, which is the case with such ammoniacal 

 salts as contain acids in which oxygen is an element. Thus 

 nitrate of ammonia acted on by potassiuin, as I have found, 

 affords azote and ammonia; and sulphur is partly disengaged, 

 and partly newly combined during the agency of potassium in 

 excess upon sulphate of ammonia. 



The action of potassium upon fluate of ammonia is precisely 

 similar to its action upon muriate of ammonia, in which as I have 

 found, by numerous experiments, ammonia and liydrogen to 

 each other in volume as two to one are disengaged, and 

 muriate of potassa [potassane) formed. 



All the hydrates, that is, all the substances which contain 

 definite proportions of water, united to acids, alkalies, or 

 oxides, which are fluid, or capable of being rendered fluid by 

 heat, when exposed to the chemical agency of Voltaic elec- 

 tricity, undergo decomposition, and their inflammable prin- 

 ciples, either pure or combined with a smaller proportion of 

 oxygen, are disengaged at the negative surface in the circuit, 

 and their oxygen at the positive surface. I'hus sulphuric acid 

 affords sulphur and hydrogen at tiie negative surface, and the 

 hydrophosphorous acid, phosphuretted hydrogen and phos- 

 phorus, and nitric acid nitrous gas ; and all these bodies yield 

 oxygen at the positive surface. 



I undertook the experiment of electrizing pure liquid fluoric 

 acid, with considerable interest, as it seemed to offer the most 

 probable method of ascertaining its real nature ; but consider- 



