upon oxygenized and hyperoxygenized muriatic Acid , &c. 145 
I shall not stop to detail a number of amusing phenomena 
that may be produced, by projecting into the stronger acids, 
mixtures of combustible bodies, whether metallic or not, and 
hyperoxygenized muriate of potash. The cause of them is well 
understood, and the theory points them out : they are, there- 
fore, no longer objects of philosophical admiration. But I must 
mention one experiment, which, had it succeeded, I should have 
thought important. I projected various mixtures of very mi- 
nutely pulverised diamond and this salt, into the different acids ; 
but found the diamond undiminished, by every attempt to com- 
bine it with oxygen in the humid way.* 
Another, but imponderable, part of this salt, as indeed of all 
hyperoxygenized muriates, seems to be an extraordinary quan- 
tity of caloric. For, during their formation, scarcely any heat 
is disengaged, as by other acids ; and, very little heat applied to 
the salts, gives the gaseous form to their oxygen. 
An opinion has prevailed among some ingenious chemists, 
that, from a mixture of this salt with sulphuric acid, nitrous gas 
is disengaged, and sulphate of lime formed in the retort. But 
this is a mistake, arising, on the one hand, from the smell and 
vapour of the hyperoxygenized muriatic acid, and, on the other, 
from sulphate of lead, which the common sulphuric acid of this 
* t must confess, that the vivid flashes of light, emitted from the mixture of this 
salt and combustible bodies thrown into an acid, appear to me, in some measure, to 
prove the modification proposed by Leonhardi, Richter, Gren, &c. to that part 
of the Lavoisieri an theory which regards the emission of light during combustion. 
Another testimony in favour of their modification, may be drawn from the vegetable 
kingdom. All plants growing in places deprived of light, are merely mucilaginous. 
But the mucilage of these plants burns without the emission of light. Light, there- 
fore, appears not to be disengaged from oxygeQ ; else, why not by this mucilage, as 
well as by other combustible bodies ? 
