Page:The Liquefaction of Gases.djvu/31

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Liquefaction of Gases.
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a frame, so that no gas should escape, except when the screw and stopper 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 fluid 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 quick-silver had been frozen in the course of a few minutes." From the circumstance of its being reduced only in part

  1. Ibid. p. 198.