Lecture Iv.

Of Dephlogisticated Air.

Dephlogisticated air, which is one of the component parts of atmospherical air, is a principal element in the composition of acids, and may be extracted by means of heat from many substances which contain them, especially the nitrous and vitriolic; as from nitre, red precipitate, the vitriols, and turbith mineral, and also from these two acids themselves, exposed to a red heat in an earthen tube. This kind of air is also contained in several substances which had attracted it from the atmosphere, as from precipitate per se, minium, & manganese.

Dephlogisticated air is likewise produced by the action of light upon green vegetables; and this seems to be the chief means employed by nature to preserve the purity of the atmosphere.

It is this ingredient in atmospheric air that enables it to support combustion and animal life. By means of it the most intense heat may be produced, and in the purest of it animals will live nearly five times as long as in an equal quantity of atmospherical air.

In respiration, part of this air, passing the membrane of the lungs, unites with the blood, and imparts to it its florid colour, while the remainder, uniting with phlogiston exhaled from the venous blood, forms fixed air. It is dephlogisticated air combined with water that enables fishes to live in it.

Dephlogisticated air is something heavier than atmospherical air, and the purity of it measured by mixing with it two equal quantities of nitrous or inflammable air, deducing the residuum after the diminution from the three measures employed, and dividing the remainder by 3, as in the process for common air.

Of Phlogisticated Air.

The other ingredient in the composition of atmospherical air is phlogisticated air. It is procured by extracting the dephlogisticated part of the common air, as by the calcination of metals, &c. &c. by dissolving animal substances in nitrous acid, and also by the union of phlogiston with nitrous air, as by heating iron in it, and by a mixture of iron-filings and sulphur.

Phlogisticated air extinguishes a candle, is entirely unfit for respiration, and is something lighter than common air. It is not capable of decomposition, except by exploding it together with a superabundance of dephlogisticated air, and a quantity of inflammable air, or by taking the electric spark repeatedly in a mixture of it and dephlogisticated air. In these cases nitrous acid is formed.