70 Sir H. Davy’s Account of some new Experiments , 
One of the first experiments that I made, with the hope of 
detecting oxygen in chlorine, was by acting upon it by am- 
monia, when I found that no water was formed, and that the 
results were merely muriate of ammonia and azote and the 
driest muriate of ammonia, I find, when heated with potas- 
sium, converts it into muriate of potassa, which result would 
be impossible on the hypothesis of oxymuriatic gas being a 
compound of oxygen, for, if there was a separation of water 
during the formation of the muriate, the same oxygen could 
not be supposed to be detached in water, and yet likewise to 
remain so as to form part of a neutral salt. 
If water had been really formed during the action of chlo- 
rine on ammonia, the result would have been a most impor- 
tant one : it would have proved either that chlorine or azote 
was a compound, and contained oxygen, or that both contained 
this substance ; but it would not have proved the existence of 
oxygen in chlorine, till it had been shewn that the azote of 
the ammonia was unchanged in the operation. 
Some authors continue to write and speak with scepticism 
on the subject, and demand stronger evidence of chlorine, 
being undecompounded. These evidences it is impossible to 
give. It has resisted all attempts at decomposition. In this 
respect, it agrees with gold, and silver, and hydrogen, and 
oxygen. Persons may doubt, whether these are elementary 
bodies; but it is not philosophical to doubt, whether they have 
not been resolved into other forms of matter. 
By the same mode of reasoning, as that in which oxygen 
is conceived to exist in chlorine, any other species of matter 
might be supposed to form one of its constituent parts ; and 
♦ Philosophical Transactions for 1810. 
