Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air Part 3

In the method in which I generally made the fixed air (and indeed always, unless the contrary be particularly mentioned, viz. by diluted oil of vitriol and chalk) I found by experiment that it was as pure as Mr. Cavendish made it. For after it had patted through a large body of water in small bubbles, still 1/50 or 1/60 part only was not absorbed by water. In order to try this as expeditiously as possible, I kept pouring the air from one gla.s.s vessel into another, immersed in a quant.i.ty of cold water, in which manner I found by experience, that almost any quant.i.ty may be reduced as far as possible in a very short time. But the most expeditious method of making water imbibe any kind of air, is to confine it in a jar; and agitate it strongly, in the manner described in my pamphlet on the impregnation of water with fixed air, and represented fig. 10.

At the same time that I was trying the purity of my fixed air, I had the curiosity to endeavour to ascertain whether that part of it which is not miscible in water, be equally diffused through the whole ma.s.s; and, for this purpose, I divided a quant.i.ty of about a gallon into three parts, the first consisting of that which was uppermost, and the last of that which was the lowest, contiguous to the water; but all these parts were reduced in about an equal proportion, by pa.s.sing through the water, so that the whole ma.s.s had been of an uniform composition. This I have also found to be the case with several kinds of air, which will, not properly incorporate.

A mouse will live very well, though a candle will not burn in the residuum of the purest fixed air that I can make; and I once made a very large quant.i.ty for the sole purpose of this experiment. This, therefore, seems to be one instance of the generation of genuine common air, though vitiated in some degree. It is also another proof of the residuum of fixed air being, in part at least, common air, that it becomes turbid, and is diminished by the mixture of nitrous air, as will be explained hereafter.

That fixed air only wants some addition to make it permanent, and immiscible with water if not in all respects, common air, I have been led to conclude, from several attempts which I once made to mix it with air in which a quant.i.ty of iron filings and brimstone, made into a paste with water, had stood; for, in several mixtures of this kind, I imagined that not much more than half of the fixed air could be imbibed by water; but, not being able to repeat the experiment, I conclude that I either deceived myself in it, or that I overlooked some circ.u.mstance on which the success of it depended.

These experiments, however, whether they were fallacious or otherwise, induced me to try whether any alteration would be made in the const.i.tution of fixed air, by this mixture of iron filings and brimstone. I therefore put a mixture of this kind into a quant.i.ty of as pure fixed air as I could make, and confined the whole in quicksilver, lest the water should absorb it before the effects of the mixture could take place. The consequence was, that the fixed air was diminished, and the quicksilver rose in the vessel, till about the fifth part was occupied by it; and, as near as I could judge, the process went on, in all respects, as if the air in the inside had been common air.

What is most remarkable, in the result of this experiment, is, that the fixed air, into which this mixture had been put, and which had been in part diminished by it, was in part also rendered insoluble in water by this means. I made this experiment four times, with the greatest care, and observed, that in two of them about one sixth, and in the other two about one fourteenth, of the original quant.i.ty, was such as could not be absorbed by water, but continued permanently elastic. Lest I should have made any mistake with respect to the purity of the fixed air, the last time that I made the experiment, I set part of the fixed air, which I made use of, in a separate vessel, and found it to be exceedingly pure, so as to be almost wholly absorbed by water; whereas the other part, to which I had put the mixture, was far from being so.

In one of these cases, in which fixed air was made immiscible with water, it appeared to be not very noxious to animals; but in another case, a mouse died in it pretty soon. This difference probably arose from my having inadvertently agitated the air in water rather more in one case than in the other.

As the iron is reduced to a calx by this process, I once concluded, that it is phlogiston that fixed air wants, to make it common air; and, for any thing I yet know this may be the case, though I am ignorant of the method of combining them; and when I calcined a quant.i.ty of lead in fixed air, in the manner which will be described hereafter, it did not seem to have been less soluble in water than it was before.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] An account of Mr. Hey's experiments will be found in the Appendix to these papers.

SECTION II.

_Of AIR in which a CANDLE, or BRIMSTONE, has burned out._

It is well known that flame cannot subsist long without change of air, so that the common air is necessary to it, except in the case of substances, into the composition of which nitre enters, for these will burn _in vacuo_, in fixed air, and even under water, as is evident in some rockets, which are made for this purpose. The quant.i.ty of air which even a small flame requires to keep it burning is prodigious. It is generally said, that an ordinary candle _consumes_, as it is called, about a gallon in a minute. Considering this amazing consumption of air, by fires of all kinds, volcanos, &c. it becomes a great object of philosophical inquiry, to ascertain what change is made in the const.i.tution of the air by flame, and to discover what provision there is in nature for remedying the injury which the atmosphere receives by this means. Some of the following experiments will, perhaps, be thought to throw light upon the subject.

The diminution of the quant.i.ty of air in which a candle, or brimstone, has burned out, is various; But I imagine that, at a medium, it may be about one fifteenth, or one sixteenth of the whole; which is one third as much as by animal or vegetable substances putrefying in it, by the calcination of metals, or by any of the other causes of the complete diminution of air, which will be mentioned hereafter.

I have sometimes thought, that flame disposes the common air to deposit the fixed air it contains; for if any lime-water be exposed to it, it immediately becomes turbid. This is the case, when wax candles, tallow candles, chips of wood, spirit of wine, ether, and every other substance which I have yet tried, except brimstone, is burned in a close gla.s.s vessel, standing in lime-water. This precipitation of fixed air (if this be the case) may be owing to something emitted from the burning bodies, which has a stronger affinity with the other const.i.tuent parts of the atmosphere[3].

If brimstone be burned in the same circ.u.mstances, the lime-water continues transparent, but still there may have been the same precipitation of the fixed part of the air; but that, uniting with the lime and the vitriolic acid, it forms a selenetic salt, which is soluble in water. Having evaporated a quant.i.ty of water thus impregnated, by burning brimstone a great number of times over it, a whitish powder remained, which had an acid taste; but repeating the experiment with a quicker evaporation, the powder had no acidity, but was very much like chalk. The burning of brimstone but once over a quant.i.ty of lime-water, will affect it in such a manner, that breathing into it will not make it turbid, which otherwise it always presently does.

Dr. Hales supposed, that by burning brimstone repeatedly in the same quant.i.ty of air, the diminution would continue without end. But this I have frequently tried, and not found to be the case. Indeed, when the ignition has been imperfect in the first instance, a second firing of the same substance will increase the effect of the first, &c. but this progress soon ceases.

In many cases of the diminution of air, the effect is not immediately apparent, even when it stands in water; for sometimes the bulk of air will not be much reduced, till it has pa.s.sed several times through a quant.i.ty of water, which has thereby a better opportunity of absorbing that part of the air, which had not been perfectly detatched from the rest. I have sometimes found a very great reduction of a ma.s.s of air, in consequence of pa.s.sing but once through cold water. If the air has stood in quicksilver, the diminution is generally inconsiderable, till it has undergone this operation, there not being any substance exposed to the air that could absorb any part of it.

I could not find any considerable alteration in the specific gravity of the air, in which candles, or brimstone, had burned out. I am satisfied, however, that it is not heavier than common air, which must have been manifest, if so great a diminution of the quant.i.ty had been owing, as Dr. Hales and others supposed, to the elasticity of the whole ma.s.s being impaired. After making several trials for this purpose, I concluded that air, thus diminished in bulk, is rather lighter than common air, which favours the supposition of the fixed, or heavier part of the common air, having been precipitated.

An animal will live nearly, if not quite as long, in air in which candles have burned out, as in common air. This fact surprized me very greatly, having imagined that what is called the _consumption_ of air by flame, or respiration, to have been of the same nature, and in the same degree; but I have since found, that this fact has been observed by many persons, and even so early as by Mr. Boyle. I have also observed, that air, in which brimstone has burned, is not in the least injurious to animals, after the fumes, which at first make it very cloudy, have intirely subsided.

I must, in this place, admonish my reader not to confound the simple _burning of brimstone_, or of matches (_i. e._ bits of wood dipped in it) and the burning of brimstone with a burning mirror, or any _foreign heat_. The effect of the former is nothing more than that of any other _flame_, or _ignited vapour_, which will not burn, unless the air with which it is surrounded be in a very pure state, and which is therefore extinguished when the air begins to be much vitiated. Lighted brimstone, therefore reduces the air to the same state as lighted wood. But the focus of a burning mirror thrown for a sufficient time either upon brimstone, or wood, after it has ceased to burn of its own accord, and has become _charcoal_, will have a much greater effect: of the same kind, diminishing the air to its utmost extent, and making it thoroughly noxious. In fact, as will be seen hereafter, more phlogiston is expelled from these substances in the latter case than in the former. I never, indeed, actually carried this experiment so far with brimstone; but from the diminution of air that I did produce by this means, I concluded that, by continuing the process some time longer, it would have been effected.

Having read, in the Memoirs of the Philosophical Society at Turin, vol.

I. p. 41. that air in which candles had burned out was perfectly restored, so that other candles would burn in it again as well as ever, after having been exposed to a considerable degree of _cold_, and likewise after having been compressed in bladders, (for the cold had been supposed to have produced this effect by nothing but _condensation_) I repeated those experiments, and did, indeed, find, that when I compressed the air in _bladders_, as the Count de Saluce, who made the observation, had done, the experiment succeeded: but having had sufficient reason to distrust bladders, I compressed the air in a gla.s.s vessel standing in water; and then I found, that this process is altogether ineffectual for the purpose. I kept the air compressed much more, and much longer, than the Count had done, but without producing any alteration in it. I also find, that a greater degree of cold than that which he applied, and of longer continuance, did by no means restore this kind of air: for when I had exposed the phials which contained it a whole night, in which the frost was very intense; and also when I kept it surrounded with a mixture of snow and salt, I found it, in all respects, the same as before.

It is also advanced, in the same Memoir, p. 41. that _heat_ only, as the reverse of _cold_, renders air unfit for candles burning in it. But I repeated the experiment of the Count for that purpose, without finding any such effect from it. I also remember that, many years ago, I filled an exhausted receiver with air, which had pa.s.sed through a gla.s.s tube made red-hot, and found that a candle would burn in it perfectly well.

Also, rarefaction by the air-pump does not injure air in the least degree.

Though this experiment failed, I have been so happy, as by accident to have hit upon a method of restoring air, which has been injured by the burning of candles, and to have discovered at least one of the restoratives which nature employs for this purpose. It is _vegetation_.

This restoration of vitiated air, I conjecture, is effected by plants imbibing the phlogistic matter with which it is overloaded by the burning of inflammable bodies. But whether there be any foundation for this conjecture or not, the fact is, I think, indisputable. I shall introduce the account of my experiments on this subject, by reciting some of the observations which I made on the growing of plants in confined air, which led to this discovery.

One might have imagined that, since common air is necessary to vegetable, as well as to animal life, both plants and animals had affected it in the same manner; and I own I had that expectation, when I first put a sprig of mint into a gla.s.s jar, standing inverted in a vessel of water: but when it had continued growing there for some months, I found that the air would neither extinguish a candle, nor was it at all inconvenient to a mouse, which I put into it.

The plant was not affected any otherwise than was the necessary consequence of its confined situation; for plants growing in several other kinds of air, were all affected in the very same manner. Every succession of leaves was more diminished in size than the preceding, till, at length, they came to be no bigger than the heads of pretty small pins. The root decayed, and the stalk also, beginning from the root; and yet the plant continued to grow upwards, drawing its nourishment through a black and rotten stem. In the third or fourth set of leaves, long and white hairy filaments grew from the insertion of each leaf and sometimes from the body of the stem, shooting out as far as the vessel in which it grew would permit, which, in my experiments, was about two inches. In this manner a sprig of mint lived, the old plant decaying, and new ones shooting up in its place, but less and less continually, all the summer season.

In repeating this experiment, care must be taken to draw away all the dead leaves from about the plant, lest they should putrefy, and affect the air. I have found that a fresh cabbage leaf, put under a gla.s.s vessel filled with common air, for the s.p.a.ce of one night only, has so affected the air, that a candle would not burn in it the next morning, and yet the leaf had not acquired any smell of putrefaction.

Finding that candles would burn very well in air in which plants had grown a long time, and having had some reason to think, that there was something attending vegetation, which restored air that had been injured by respiration, I thought it was possible that the same process might also restore the air that had been injured by the burning of candles.

Accordingly, on the 17th of August 1771, I put a sprig of mint into a quant.i.ty of air, in which a wax candle had burned out, and found that, on the 27th of the same month, another candle burned perfectly well in it. This experiment I repeated, without the least variation in the event, not less than eight or ten times in the remainder of the summer.

Several times I divided the quant.i.ty of air in which the candle had burned out, into two parts, and putting the plant into one of them, left the other in the same exposure, contained, also, in a gla.s.s vessel immersed in water, but without any plant; and never failed to find, that a candle would burn in the former, but not in the latter.

I generally found that five or six days were sufficient to restore this air, when the plant was in its vigour; whereas I have kept this kind of air in gla.s.s vessels, immersed in water many months, without being able to perceive that the least alteration had been made in it. I have also tried a great variety of experiments upon it, as by condensing, rarefying, exposing to the light and heat, &c. and throwing into it the effluvia of many different substances, but without any effect.

Experiments made in the year 1772, abundantly confirmed my conclusion concerning the restoration of air, in which candles had burned out by plants growing in it. The first of these experiments was made in the month of May; and they were frequently repeated in that and the two following months, without a single failure.

For this purpose I used the flames of different substances, though I generally used wax or tallow candles. On the 24th of June the experiment succeeded perfectly well with air in which spirit of wine had burned out, and on the 27th of the same month it succeeded equally well with air in which brimstone matches had burned out, an effect of which I had despaired the preceding year.

This restoration of air, I found, depended upon the _vegetating state_ of the plant; for though I kept a great number of the fresh leaves of mint in a small quant.i.ty of air in which candles had burned out, and changed them frequently, for a long s.p.a.ce of time, I could perceive no melioration in the state of the air.

This remarkable effect does not depend upon any thing peculiar to _mint_, which was the plant that I always made use of till July 1772; for on the 16th of that month, I found a quant.i.ty of this kind of air to be perfectly restored by sprigs of _balm_, which had grown in it from the 7th of the same month.

That this restoration of air was not owing to any _aromatic effluvia_ of these two plants, not only appeared by the _essential oil of mint_ having no sensible effect of this kind; but from the equally complete restoration of this vitiated air by the plant called _groundsel_, which is usually ranked among the weeds, and has an offensive smell. This was the result of an experiment made the 16th of July, when the plant had been growing in the burned air from the 8th of the same month. Besides, the plant which I have found to be the most effectual of any that I have tried for this purpose is _spinach_, which is of quick growth, but will seldom thrive long in water. One jar of burned air was perfectly restored by this plant in four days, and another in two days. This last was observed on the 22d of July.

In general, this effect may be presumed to have taken place in much less time than I have mentioned; because I never chose to make a trial of the air, till I was pretty sure, from preceding observations, that the event which I had expected must have taken place, if it would succeed at all; lest, returning back that part of the air on which I made the trial, and which would thereby necessarily receive a small mixture of common air, the experiment might not be judged to be quite fair; though I myself might be sufficiently satisfied with respect to the allowance that was to be made for that small imperfection.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] The supposition, mentioned in this and other pa.s.sages of the first part of this publication, viz. that the diminution of common air, by this and other processes is, in part at least, owing to the precipitation of the fixed air from it, the reader will find confirmed by the experiments and observations in the second part.

SECTION III.

_Of INFLAMMABLE AIR._

I have generally made inflammable air in the manner described by Mr.

Cavendish, in the Philosophical Transactions, from iron, zinc, or tin; but chiefly from the two former metals, on account of the process being the least troublesome: but when I extracted it from vegetable or animal substances, or from coals, I put them into a gun-barrel, to the orifice of which I luted a gla.s.s tube, or the stem of a tobacco-pipe, and to the end of this I tied a flaccid bladder in order to catch the generated air; or I received the air in a vessel of quicksilver, in the manner represented Fig. 7.

There is not, I believe, any vegetable or animal substance whatever, nor any mineral substance, that is inflammable, but what will yield great plenty of inflammable air, when they are treated in this manner, and urged with a strong heat; but, in order to get the most air, the heat must be applied as suddenly, and as vehemently, as possible. For, notwithstanding the same care be taken in luting, and in every other respect, six or even ten times more air may be got by a sudden heat than by a slow one, though the heat that is last applied be as intense as that which was applied suddenly. A bit of dry oak, weighing about twelve grains, will generally yield about a sheep's bladder full of inflammable air with a brisk heat, when it will only give about two or three ounce measures, if the same heat be applied to it very gradually. To what this difference is owing, I cannot tell. Perhaps the phlogiston being extricated more slowly may not be intirely expelled, but form another kind of union with its base; so that charcoal made with a heat slowly applied shall contain more phlogiston than that which is made with a sudden heat. It may be worth while to examine the properties of the charcoal with this view.

Inflammable air, when it is made by a quick process, has a very strong and offensive smell, from whatever substance it be generated; but this smell is of three different kinds, according as the air is extracted from mineral, vegetable, or animal substances. The last is exceedingly fetid; and it makes no difference, whether it be extracted from a bone, or even an old and dry tooth, from soft muscular flesh; or any other part of the animal. The burning of any substance occasions the same smell: for the gross fume which arises from them, before they flame, is the inflammable air they contain, which is expelled by heat, and then readily ignited. The smell of inflammable air is the very same, as far as I am able to perceive, from whatever substance of the same kingdom it be extracted. Thus it makes no difference whether it be got from iron, zinc, or tin, from any kind of wood, or, as was observed before, from any part of an animal.