This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1776 edition. Excerpt: ... An explosion of two thirds of inflammable air mixed with rather more than one-third of dephlogisticated air, seemed to be forty times louder than when made with two thirds of atmospheric air. Dr. Priestley has, with great reason, formed very high expectations of the falutary and useful purposes to which this pure air may be applied, and seems to think that, in time, it may even become a fashionable article of luxury. "Hitherto," fays he, "only two mice and myself have had the privilege of breathing it." By these extracts which Doctor Priestley (with that friendly disposition and that desire of contributing to the improvement of science, which so remarkably distinguish him) has permitted me to make from his recent and very valuable publication, it appears that he thinks, contrary to the opinion of M. Lavoisier, as advanced in the last article, that the principle imbibed by metals during their calcination, and which constitutes the increase in their weight, is, in some instances, fixed air, and in others nitrous acid, attracted by them from the common air in which they are calcined. It also appears that this philosopher, instead of regarding atmospheric or common air (when free from the foreign matters which are always supposed to be dissolved, and intermixed with it) as a simple elementary substance, considers it as a mixture of several principles capable of decomposition; and that he has discovered a method of compounding common respirable air, by adding to dephlogisticated air such a quantity of phlogiston as reduces it to the state in which we generally find the atmosphere surrounding the planet which we inhabit. It has been seen, page 409, that M. Lavoisier having embraced the hypothesis of common air being converted into fixed air by...