Mr. Davy’s Experiments on the 
heat from the oilier compounds of oxymuriatic gas and phos- 
phorus with ammonia, and the substance remaining in com- 
bination is the phosphoric sublimate. 
* 
6. Some Reflections on the Nomenclature of the Oxymuriatic 
Compounds. 
To call a body which is not known to contain oxygene, and 
which cannot contain muriatic acid, oxymuriatic acid, is con- 
trary to the principles of that nomenclature in which it is 
adopted ; and an alteration of it seems necessary to assist the 
progress of discussion, and to diffuse just ideas on the subject. 
If the great discoverer of this substance had signified it by 
any simple name, it would have been proper to have recurred 
to it ; but, dephlogisticaied marine acid is a term which can 
hardly be adopted in the present advanced sera of the science. 
After consulting some of the most eminent chemical philo- 
sophers in this country, it has been judged most proper to 
suggest a name founded upon one of its obvious and charac- 
teristic properties — its colour, and to call it Chlorine , or 
Chloric gas.* 
Should it hereafter be discovered to be compound, and even 
to contain oxygene, this name can imply no error, and cannot 
necessarily require a change. 
Most of the salts which have been called muriates, are not 
known to contain any muriatic acid, or any oxygene. Thus 
Libavius’s liquor, though converted into a muriate by water, 
contains only tin and oxymuriatic gas, and horn-silver seems 
incapable of being converted into a true muriate. 
I venture to propose for the compounds of oxymuriatic 
* From 
