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XII. Some experiments on a solid compound of iodine and oxygene , 
and on its chemical agencies. By Sir Humphry Davy, LL . D . 
F. R. S. 
Read April 20, 1815. 
In the two papers containing researches on iodine which the 
Royal Society has done me the honour of publishing in the 
Transactions, I have described a class of bodies consisting of 
iodine, oxygene, and different bases analogous to the hyper- 
oxymuriates. In the last of these papers, I mentioned, that 
I had not been able to procure any binary combination of 
iodine and oxygene from these compounds, neither by the 
method proposed by M. Gay Lussac, namely, the action of 
sulphuric acid on the oxyiode of barium, nor by other methods 
of my own institution ; and that in experiments on the effects 
of the acids on the oxyiodes, new combinations only were 
formed. I have lately resumed this enquiry, and by pursuing 
a new and entirely different plan of operation, I have at last 
succeeded in combining oxygene and iodine. In the follow- 
ing pages I shall describe the circumstances which led me to 
ascertain the existence of this compound, and I shall detail 
some experiments on its analysis and its chemical agencies. 
In the course of my researches, I observed, that when a 
solution of the compound of iodine and chlorine was poured 
into alkaline solutions, or even into certain muriatic solutions, 
the precipitate was an oxyiode ; and this fact seemed to indi- 
cate, that iodine had a stronger attraction for oxygen® than 
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