32 6 Sir H. Davy’s new experiments on some 
the stop-cock of the retort ; yet the conversion of the phos- 
phorus by heat into the liquor was almost complete ; there 
remained only a minute fragment. In this experiment, 
however, the liquor held phosphorus in solution. When this 
phosphorus was precipitated by water, and obtained with the 
fragment by sublimation in a small glass tube, it did not 
equal T 7 ^ of a grain, and was no more than could be expected 
from the loss of the sublimate. 
These two experiments prove distinctly that the oxygen in 
phosphorous acid is half that in phosphoric acid ; for if the 
proportion had been that which M. Dulong and M. Berzelius 
indicate, 1.67 grains of phosphorus, at least, ought to have 
remained after the action of the sublimate. 
A collateral experiment was made. 32.7 grains of the fluid 
chloride, made by passing phosphorus through corrosive 
sublimate in great excess, were acted on by water, and pre- 
cipitated by nitrate of silver ; the precipitate was immediately 
separated from the fluid, after it had been greatly diluted 
with distilled water. Distilled water was then repeatedly 
passed through it, and it was dried and fused, when it weighed 
98.4 grains ; which, allowing 24.5 per cent, of chlorine in 
horn silver, would give the composition of the fluid chloride 
as 24.108 of chlorine, and 8.592 of phosphorus. 
The comparative quantity of precipitate in this experiment 
was so much less than I had found in a former experiment, 
that, notwithstanding the care with which the process had bee 
conducted, I resolved to make some more experiments of the 
same kind. In the first, in which the decomposition by water 
was made in a small bottle, from which no vapour could 
escape, and in which I superintended the weighing and drying 
