Volume 2

Experiments and observations on different kinds of air, and other branches of natural philosophy, connected with the subject ... / being the former six volumes abridged and methodized, with many additions. By Joseph Priestley.

  • Priestley, Joseph, 1733-1804.
Date:
1790
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Experiments and observations on different kinds of air, and other branches of natural philosophy, connected with the subject ... / being the former six volumes abridged and methodized, with many additions. By Joseph Priestley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    76/496 (page 60)
    heat of boiling water, and this was all phloglfli- cated air. Ufing more fpirit of nitre, I obferved, that, though the produdion of air was pretty copious, as was manifeft by the bubbles formed at the bot- tom of the phial, and riling to the top, there was no increafc of the whole quantity of air in the phial. Examining the air in this ftate of the procefs, I found that it had very little power of diminijfhing common air, and that a candle burned in it with a vivid flame, which is the intermediate flate of this air, before it becomes phlogifticated air. I imagine, therefore, that in all thefe cafes, a proper nitrous air is firft produced, and that it is afterwards, by means of the iron to which it is expofed, chang- ed into that fpecies of air in which a candle can burn, and laftly into phlogifticated air, which ex^- tinguifties a candle, I have alfo procured this kind of air in a direft procefs by the folution of zinc and tin. I completely faturated a quantity of Ipirit of nitre with zinc. This folution, while it was hot was fluid, but when it was cold it refembled a whitifti jelly. Diftilling this jelly to drynefs, in a glafs veflel, and receiving the air that came from It in three parts, I obferved that the firft was the common air in the phial, very little phlogifticated; which