

334 Mr. Wart’s Thoughts on the conflituent | 
4. “It appears, that dephlogifticated. water,” or, vehicle 
may be a better natne for the bafis of water and air, the eles 
ment you call umor, «has a moré powerful attragtion. iv 
‘* phlogiften than i has for latent heat, but that it cannot 
<‘ unite with it, at leaft not to the point of faturation, or to ( 
«¢ the total expulfion of the heat, unlefs it be firft made red~ : 
‘¢ hot,” or nearly fo. ‘* The electric fpark heats a portion o 
«it red-hot, the attraction between the humor and the phlo- ; 
*¢ oifton takes place, and the heat which is let loofe from this 
<¢ firft pertion heats a fecond, which operates in a like manner” 
‘¢ on the-adjoiing particles, and fo continually until the whole” 
<¢is heated ie and decompofed.” Why this attraétion 
does not take place to the fame degree in the common tempera- 
ture of the atmofphere, is a queftion I am not yet able to 
folve; but it appears, that, in fome circumftances, ‘* dephlo- 
“« gifticated air can unite, in certain degrees, with phlogifton 
** without being changed into water.” Thus Dr. PrizsrLey 
has found, that by taking clean filings of iron, which, alone, 
produce only inflammable air of the pureft kind, and mercurius 
calcinatus per fe, which gives only the pureft dephlogifticated 
air, and expofing them to heat, in the fame veflel, he obtained 
neither dephlogifticated nor inflammable air, ‘* but in their 
‘«« place fixed air.” Yet it is well known, that a,mixture of 
dephlogifticated and inflammable air will remain for years in 
clofe veffels in the common leat of the atmofphere, without 
fuffering any change, the mixture being as capable of deflagras 
tion at the end of that time as it was when firft thut up. 
Thefe facts the Doctor accounts for, by iuppofing that the two 
kinds of air, when formed at the fame time in the fame veffel, 
can unite in their wa/cent ftate; but that, when fully formed, 
they are incapable of ating upon one another, unlefs they are 
Art 
