2^8 Dr. Beddoes’s Observations on the Process for 
EXPERIMENT I. 
Six pounds of dark grey melting cast iron were put into an 
earthen retort ; a glass tube was luted to the neck, and its ex- 
tremity was immersed in water. The retort was placed in 
a wind furnace. Before the retort and its contents could be 
supposed to be red hot, inflammable air came over. It burned 
with a deep blue flame, and was in no degree explosive. It 
rendered lime-water turbid, and was partly absorbed. When 
the retort had been heated about an hour and half, the air, 
which was coming over pretty copiously, that is, at the rate of 
an ounce measure every three minutes, upon an average, sud- 
denly ceased, and the apparatus, on examination, proved to be 
no longer air-tight. The retort was found to be cracked ; and 
the lumps of iron had none of them been melted, but they had 
been softened, and conglutinated together. 
EXPERIMENT II. 
Four ounces Troy of the same iron were put into one of 
Mr. Wedgwood’s earthen tubes, glazed and closed at one end. 
That end of the tube was inclosed in a barrel-shaped crucible, 
the interstice filled with sand, and the crucible reclined so as 
to form a very small angle with the horizon : in other respects 
the apparatus was disposed as before. On the application of 
heat, air was again extricated, sooner than I should have ex- 
pected, of the same inexplosive inflammable kind. About one- 
seventh of that which came over first, and which traversed the 
water of the receiving vessels, was absorbed by milk of lime. 
The residue burned slowly, with a dame apparently not so 
deep as before the carbonic acid was separated. 
In this and the former experiment, the elastic fluids were 
