352 MR. GROVE ON THE GAS VOLTAIC BATTERY. 



month in closed circuit, during which time they were constantly tested by the galva- 

 nometer and evidenced a continuous voltaic action ; at the expiration of the month 

 the results were as follows : — 



Experiment 1. — Rise of liquid in tubes of 



Oxygen =0*32 cubic inch. 



Deutoxide of nitrogen. . . =1*26 cubic inch. 



Experiment 2. — In oxygen tubes =0-5 cubic inch. 



Deutoxide of nitrogen. . . =2-5 cubic inches. 



Experiment 3. — In oxygen tubes =0*2 cubic inch. 



Deutoxide of nitrogen . . =0*75 cubic inch. 

 In oxygen tubes, rise . . . =0*34 cubic inch. 



Lin deutoxide tubes, rise . . =1*5 cubic inch. 



The slight excess being undoubtedly due to the greater solubility of the deutoxide, 

 it appears that four volumes of deutoxide of nitrogen are absorbed in the gas battery 

 for one of the associated oxygen, and the result would be a compound of 1 equiv. 

 nitrogen + 3 oxygen, or hyponitrous acid, which is exactly that formed by the slow 

 combination of these two gases in the ordinary chemical way. The difference of 

 amount of action in the three experiments depended on the temperature, the second 

 experiment being made towards the close of last summer, the last experiment during 

 the continuous cold weather of the present spring. 



These experiments, coupled with the converse ones with hydrogen and deutoxide 

 of nitrogen (30.), afford very satisfactory instances of the illustration of the law of 

 definite combining volumes by the gas battery, exhibiting in one result, and itself 

 registering that result, the action of equivalent chemical combination, catalysis and 

 voltaism. 



(32.) I now pass to the experiments which will form the more immediate subject 

 of this paper. The temporary action to which I have alluded (21.) being greater 

 when nitrogen and oxygen were the gases used, if the nitrogen were obtained by 

 burning phosphorus in atmospheric air, than if procured from other sources, it natu- 

 rally occurred to me that this action was due either to some phosphorous acid re- 

 maining in a state of vapour in the nitrogen, or to a slight portion of the phosphorus 

 itself being held in solution in the nitrogen, as believed by Vauquelin and the older 

 experimentalists. If this last supposition were the correct one, it seemed to offer a 

 means of rendering phosphorus, though a non-conductor and insoluble in aqueous 

 liquids, yet a permanent voltaic excitant analogous to the oxidable metals. 



(33.) A small piece of phosphorus having been carefully dried, and weighing when 

 dry 9'6 grains, was passed up through the liquid into the large tube of a gas battery 

 by means of a small loop of mica, which kept it separated both from the glass and 

 the platinum ; the tube was now charged with pure nitrogen, and the associated tube 

 with pure oxygen, the level of the gases or water-mark being noted by a little slip of 

 paper pasted on the tube ; a check experiment of oxygen and nitrogen without phos- 



