4*66 Count Rumford’s Inquiry concerning the 
/ 
tion, was beautifully silvered, the revived metal forming a nar- 
row metallic ring, extending quite round the phial; and, in both 
experiments, small detached pellicles of revived metal were vi- 
sible in the oil, and adhered in several places to the inside of 
the phial, forming bright spots, in which the colour of the me- 
tal, and its peculiar splendour, were perfectly conspicuous. 
Experiment No. 15. As carbon is one of the constituent prin- 
ciples of spirit of wine, as well as of essential oils and sulphuric 
ether, I thought it possible that I might succeed in the reduc- 
tion of the oxide of gold, by mixing alcohol, with an aqueous 
solution of nitro-muriate of gold, and exposing the mixture, in 
a phial well closed, to the heat of boiling water ; but the expe- 
riment did not succeed. 
By pouring upon this mixture a small quantity of oil of 
olives, and exposing it again to the heat of boiling water, the 
gold was revived. 
Is it not probable, that the reason why the oxide was not 
reduced by alcohol, is the mobility of those elements, which 
ought to act on each other, in order that the effect in question 
may be produced ? I have no doubt but the oxide would be 
reduced, could the alcohol be made to rest on the surface of the 
aqueous solution, without mixing with it. 
I wished to have been able to have collected and examined 
the elastic fluids, which probably were formed in most of the 
preceding experiments; but my time was so much taken up 
with other matters, that I had not leisure to pursue these inves- 
tigations farther. 
In order to see what effects would be produced by the -heat 
generated at the surface of an opaque body, of a nature different 
from those hitherto used in the reduction of the metallic oxides, 
