coarse powder was introduced, and then the bottle two-thirds filled with nitromuriatic acid; it was shaken, and in a short time chlorine was abundantly disengaged. M. Morveau remarks upon the facility with which the chlorine is retained in these bottles; one, thus prepared, and forgotten, when opened at the end of eight years, gave an abundant odour of chlorine.
I had an impression on my mind that M. de Morveau had proposed the use of phials similarly charged, but made strong, well stoppered, and confined by a screw in a frame, so that no gas should escape, except when the screw and topper were loosened; but I have searched for an account of such phials without being able to find any. If such have been made, it is very probable that in some circumstances, liquid chlorine has existed in them, for as its vapour at 60° F. has only a force of about four atmospheres[1], a charge of materials might be expected frequently to yield much more chlorine than enough to fill the space, and saturate the fliuid present; and the excess would of course take the liquid form. If such vessels have not been made, our present knowledge of the strength of the vapour of chlorine will enable us to construct them of a much more convenient and portable form than has yet been given to them.
Arseniuretted Hydrogen.—This is a gas which it is said has been condensed so long since as 1805. The experiment was made by Stromeyer, and was communicated, with many other results relating to the same gas, to the Göttingen Society, Oct. 12, 1805. See Nicholson's 'Journal, ' xix. 382; also Thenard, 'Traité de Chimie,' i. 373; Brande's 'Manual,' ii. 212; and 'Annales de Chimie,' lxiv. 303. None of these contain the original experiment; but the following quotation is from Nicholson's 'Journal.' The gas was obtained over the pneumatic apparatus, by digesting an alloy of fifteen parts tin and one part arsenic, in strong muriatic acid. "Though the arsenicated hydrogen gas retains its aëriform state under every known degree of atmospheric temperature and pressure, Professor Stromeyer condensed it so far as to reduce it in part to a liquid, by immersing it in a mixture of snow and muriate of lime, in which several pounds of quicksilver had been frozen in the course of a few minutes." From the circumstance of its being reduced only in part to a liquid, we may be led to suspect that
- ↑ Philosophical Transactions, 1823, p. 198—or page 95.
