260 Chemical Instruments and Operations. 



The preceding processes are performed in the open air. 

 The peat is now once more removed, and placed under cov- 

 ers of thatch, boards, or heaps of straw; and it is assorted 

 and put into what are technically called piles, a pile being 

 five hundred and two cubic feet, Paris measure. The peat 

 is still tender, and requires much care in handling it, and in 

 conveying it to market. 



Peat burns best in chimneys that have a powerful current, 

 which will carry off the smoke and smell, in the same man- 

 ner as they do those of coal. But, it is in the several arts 

 and manufactures, that peat is more peculiarly useful. It is 

 employed in furnaces under boilers, in burning brick and 

 lime, and in preparing plaster. The ashes are very valuable • 

 in agriculture, and command a high price. 



Peat admits of being charred, when it loses its unpleasant 

 odour, and it may then be used as a substitute for the various 

 kinds of coal, in all the arts.* 



Art. V. — Chemical Instruments and Operations ; hy Prof. 

 Robert Hare, M. D. 



Application of Nitric Oxide Gas in Eudiometry. 



The property which this substance has of forming with 

 oxygen, nitrous or hyponitrous acid, either of which is ab- 

 sorbed by water, has caused it to be used in eudiometrical 

 operations ; but owing to its liability to be absorbed in a 

 small extent by water, and the variable proportions in which 

 the above-mentioned compounds are hable to be formed, the 

 results, thus obtained, have been deemed uncertain, and the 

 directions for using nitric oxide, given by such eminent chem- 

 ists as Dalton, Gay-Lussac, and Thomson, are at variance. 

 Gay-Lussac gave an empirical formula, agreeably to which, 

 one-fourth of the condensation produced by a mixture of 

 equal parts of atmospheric air, and nitric oxide, is to be as- 

 sumed as the atmospheric oxygen present. 



As nitric oxide consists of a volume of nitrogen and a vol- 

 ume of oxygen uncondensed, to convert it into nitrous acid, 



* The pamphlet concludes with a letter of the Minister of the Interior, to 

 the Prefects of the Departments, upon the working of peat beds. It contains 

 nothing of importance, which is not to be found in the preceding memoir, and 

 consequently it does not require translating. — Trans. 



