ON OLEFIANT GAS. 



5*5 



constituents are carbon and hydrogen. Mr Mur- 

 ray, however, in his System of Chemistry, has ex- 

 pressed his suspicion that oxygen is also one of its 

 constituents. He founds his conjecture on the al- 

 leged formation of carbonic acid gas when ole- 

 fiant gas is passed through a red-hot tube. Even 

 if carbonic acid were formed in this case, it would 

 not prove the gas to contain oxygen, unless the ex- 

 periment be made in such a manner as that all 

 common air is completely excluded ; and practical 

 chemists are sufficiently aware of the difficulty of 

 such an exclusion, when the experiment is made 

 in the usual way. Carbonic acid gas never makes 

 its appearance, if the whole common air be previ- 

 ously removed from the tube by means of a cur- 

 rent of hydrogen, and if care be taken to separate 

 all the oxygen with which the olefiant gas may be 

 mixed, by means of nitrous gas. It is proper to 

 know, that liquid sulphuret of lime has the pro- 

 perty of dissolving olefiant gas in considerable 

 quantity. It cannot, therefore, be used to free 

 the gas from oxygen. 



Though the well-earned celebrity of the che- 

 mists who have analysed olefiant gas, left little 

 doubt that their analysis was accurate, I thought 

 it worth while to repeat their experiments, in or- 

 der to add my testimony to theirs. 



i . One ounce measure of alcohol, of the specific 

 gravity 0.826, and 3 ounce measures of sulphuric 

 acid, of the specific gravity 1.860, were mixed to- 



K k 2 



100 



