45 2 Mr. Davy’s new analytical Researches 
conclusion of such importance, and so unsupported by the ge- 
neral order of chemical facts, that it ought not to be admitted, 
except upon the most rigid and evident experimental proofs. 
I have repeated the experiment of the absorption of ammo- 
nia by potassium in trays of platina or iron, and its distillation 
in tubes of iron more than twenty times, and often in the pre- 
sence of some of the most distinguished chemists in this coun- 
try, from whose acuteness of observation, I hoped no source 
of error could escape. 
The results, though not perfectly uniform, have all been of 
the same kind as those described in page 55. Six grains of 
potassium, the quantity constantly used, always caused the 
disappearance of from 10 to 12.5 cubical inches of well dried 
ammonia. From 5.5 to 6 cubical inches of hydrogene were 
produced, a quantity always inferior to that evolved by the 
action of an equal portion of the metal upon water. In the 
distillation from 11 to 17 cubical inches of elastic fluid were 
evolved, and from 1.5 to 2.5 grains of potassium regene- 
rated. 
The quantity of ammonia in the products, varied from a 
portion that was scarcely perceptible to one twelfth or one 
thirteenth of the whole volume of elastic fluid : and it was 
least in those cases in which the absence of moisture was most 
perfectly guarded against. Under these circumstances like- 
wise, more potassium was revived ; and the unabsorbable 
elastic fluid, and particularly the hydrogene in smaller pro- 
portion. 
When the products of distillation were collected at different 
periods, it was uniformly found that the proportion of nitro- 
gene to the hydrogene diminished as the process advanced. 
