2i4 Dr. Priestley’s Experiments relating to the 
would only prove, that phlogifton is one conftituent part of 
water ; which is an opinion that I have advanced, and men- 
tioned on feveral occafions ; and it is the lefs extraordinary, as 
water refembles metals in the remarkable property of being a 
pretty good conductor of ele&ricity. What I fhall now allege, 
however, will make it very doubtful, whether pure water be 
ever formed by the union of dephlogifticated and inflammable 
air f and perhaps make it more probable, that water, as 1 nave 
lately advanced, is only the hnjis of thofe kinds of air, as well 
as of every other kind. 
It was objected to my former experiments on the decompofi- 
tion of dephlogifticated and inflammable air, by firing them toge- 
ther in a copper vefiel, which always produced an acid liquor, 
that this acid came from the phlogijlicated air with which the de- 
phlogifticated air that I made ufe of was necefiarily more or 
lefs diluted ; or from that which I could not wholly exclude, 
as a part of atmofpherical air, when I exhaufted the copper 
vefiel by means of an air-pump. 
To obviate this objection, I then obferved, that I not only 
conftantly found that the more phlogifticated air was contained 
in the two other kinds of air (mixed in the proportion of two 
meafures of inflammable air to one of dephlogifticated) the lefs 
acid I got ; but that, when I purpofely mixed any given quan- 
tity of phlogifticated air with them, it appeared not to have 
been at all affe&ed by the procefs, but remained the very fame, 
in quantity and quality, as before. Still, however, becaufe 
]V1r. Cavendish, though in a very different procefs, had 
found nitrous acid to refult from the decompofition of phlo- 
gifticated and dephlogifticated air ; and becaufe M. Lavoisier 
and his friends had found nothing but pure water after the 
flow burning of dephlogifticated and inflammable air ; it was 
maintained 
