328 Sir H. Davy’s new experiments on some 
11 proportions in the liquid chloride, this process must be 
very liable to error. I have never been able to form the per. 
chloride, even from chlorine slowly passed through muriate 
of lime, without producing a small quantity of liquid hydrate 
of perchloride, which, when the solid perchloride was con- 
verted into liquid by more phosphorus, rose in vapour with it, 
and which, containing nearly a double quantity of chlorine, 
(for the water forms a very small part of it) occasions the 
precipitation of a much larger quantity of horn silver than the 
pure chloride formed from corrosive sublimate. 
These various experiments on the combination of phos- 
phorus with oxygen and chlorine, sufficiently agree with each 
other to afford the means of determining the proportion in 
which phosphorus combines with other bodies, or its equiva- 
lent number considered as an element. 
If the absorption of oxygen be considered as offering the 
data, and phosphoric acid be supposed to consist of two pro- 
portions of oxygen, and one of phosphorus, the number 
representing the proportion in which phosphorus combines, 
will be 22.3. If phosphoric acid be considered as consisting 
of four proportions of oxygen, the proportional number or 
equivalent of phosphorus will be 44.6. 
If the absorption of chlorine in forming phosphorane be 
made the datum, the number will be the same, 22.2, or the 
double 44.4. If the quantity of horn silver formed from the 
liquid chloride, taking the mean of all the experiments, be 
assumed as the datum, the number would be 23.5, or the 
double 47: the mean of all these proportions is 22.6, or the 
double 45.2 ; or taking away decimals, 45* 
In referring to the analyses which have been made of the 
