2i 6 Sir Humphry Davy on the action of acids 
attain a temperature equal to 21 a 8 , which may be easily 
managed by mixing it with alcohol. There are dense white 
fumes when the mixture is first made, but there seems to 
be no heat produced; a small quantity of the orange gas is 
disengaged at this time ; but the greater part of it remains 
attached to the sulphuric acid in the solid mass, and is expelled 
from it by the heat. 
The gas procured by this process over mercury, when com- 
pared with the gas procured from the hyperoxymuriate, by 
liquid muriatic acid, is found to have a much more brilliant 
colour, is much more rapidly absorbed by water, has a pecu- 
liar and much more aromatic smell, unmixed with any smell 
of chlorine. It destroys moist vegetable blues without previ- 
ously reddening them. When it is heated to a temperature 
about that of boiling water, it explodes with more violence 
than euchlorine, and greater expansion of volume, producing 
much light. After the explosion over mercury, rather less 
than three (from 2.7 to 2.9.) volumes appear for two of the 
gas decomposed, and of these, two are oxygene, and the 
remainder chlorine. 
A little chlorine is always absorbed by the mercury during 
the explosion of the gas ; and it appears reasonable to con- 
clude, that the deep yellow gas is in reality composed of two 
in volume of oxygene, and one of chlorine, condensed into 
the space of two volumes, and that it consists in weight, of 
one proportion of chlorine 67, and four of oxygene 60. 
None of the combustible bodies which I have tried, decom- 
pose this gas at common temperatures, except phosphorus ; 
this when introduced into it, occasions an explosion, and burns 
in the liberated gases with great brilliancy. 
Its saturated solution in water is of a deep yellow colour, 
