i j8 Mr, Kir wan’s Experiments 
vapours inftantly arofe, and only one-tenth or one- twelfth of 
a meafure remained in an aerial form ; but as the acid adted on 
the mercury, I was obliged to carry the jar into the water tub, 
by which means the whole was abforbed : no fulphur was here 
precipitated. 
I repeated this experiment in another manner. Having pro- 
duced 4,5 meafures of hepatic air over mercury, I transferred 
them to the water tub, and inftantly by means of a fyphon blew 
into them one meafure of the above concentrated nitrous acid;; 
but though I managed as quickly as poffible, the hepatic air 
was fomething diminiffied by contact with the water, before the 
acid had entered the tube that contained the air. I then flopped 
the tube with a ground glafs ftopper, and laid it by for twelve 
hours ; after which interval I found the liquor in the tube 
white and turbid, and but weakly acid, much water having 
entered in fpite of my endeavours to exclude it. The remain- 
ing air {lightly detonated on prefenting to it a lighted candle, 
and had an hepatic fmell. But as this hepatic air was obtained 
from fulphureo-martial pafte, it does not prove that inflammable 
air enters into the compofition of other hepatic airs,, derived 
from the union of fulphur with fubftances that do not yield 
inflammable air. 
Finding it fo difficult to fubjedt hepatic air to the diredl: 
adtion of the concentrated nitrous acid, I diluted it to that pre- 
cife degree at which it could not adl on mercury without the 
affiftance of heat, and then paffed through it an equal bulk of 
the lame hepatic air ; the acid was whitened, and eight- tenths 
of the air abforbed, and the refiduum detonated. Repeating 
the fame experiment with hepatic air from liver of fulphur, I 
found ftiil more of it abforbed. by the acid ; but the refiduum 
no 
