45 
THE ANALYSIS, 
Its separation into 
O R 
r 1. HYDROGEN AIR, 
l 2 . OXYGEN AIR. 
and 
But that no doubt may be entertained on this head, I must beg leave 
to relate an experiment which was performed by Meusnier before a large 
assembly of the Academy of Sciences at Paris. 
He took a gun-barrel, into which he put some thick pieces of iron-wire 
flattened by the hammer. He weighed the whole with a scrupulous exact¬ 
ness. He then luted the gun-barrel to secure it from the immediate contact 
of the fire. It was then placed in a furnace, but so inclined that water 
would easily glide down it. 
He then adapted to the upper extremity a funnel containing water, from 
which it could not escape into the gun-barrel but drop by drop. This 
funnel was closed at the top to avoid any the least evaporation of the 
water. 
At the lower extremity vessels were adapted to receive any aerial pro¬ 
duct. To use every precaution these were exhausted of their air. 
The gun-barrel was now made red-hot, and the water from the funnel 
passed into it drop by drop. An astonishing quantity of inflammable or 
hydrogen air * was quickly obtained. 
Having removed the luting, the gun-barrel with its contents weighed 
considerably heavier than before ; and the acquired weight of the gun-barrel 
being added to the weight of the inflammable air thus produced, was pre¬ 
cisely the weight of the water expended in the process: and the iron-wire 
found in the barrel (the process being over) resembled in every respect iron 
that has been consumed in oxygen air, that is, it was become martial cethiops, 
which accounts for the oxygen, the other constituent principle of water. 
* This inflammable air was generated from the hydrogen of the water, which united with the 
caloric of the furnace in its pasage through the barrel. Inflammable air the French chemists call 
hydrogen gas, from the Greek words uSup water, and yzivopcu to beget. 
N 
