The elementary nature of chlorine : papers / by Humphry Davy.

  • Davy Humphry, Sir, 1778-1829.
Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The elementary nature of chlorine : papers / by Humphry Davy. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

    77/86
    As the investigation of nature proceeds, it is not im- probable, that other more subtile bodies belonging to this class will be discovered, and perhaps some of the characteristic differences of those substances, which ap- parently give the same products by analysis, may depend upon this circumstance. * * * * * Oil the fallacy of the experiments in which water is said to have been formed by the decomposition of Chlorine.^^ Read February 12, 1818. SOME experiments have been lately communicated to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, from which it has been inferred, that water is formed during the action of muriatic acid gas on certain metals, and consequently, that chlorine is decomposed in this operation. In repeating those experiments, I have ascertained, that the water is derived from sources not suspected by the authors, and that their conclusions are unfounded. To take up the time of the Society by long experimental details and theoretical speculations on such an occasion, will be unnecessary; I shall therefore only transiently mention the sources of error, and demonstrate their operation by two or three examples. When muriatic acid gas is passed through fiint glass tubes heated to redness, a small quantity of water is formed by the action of the gas on the oxide of lead in *[From Philosophical Transactions for 1818, vol. 108 pp 169-171.] '