ecially by agitating them strongly together, I should
deprive the air of all its inflammability; but neither of these
operations succeeded, for still the air was only exploded at once, as
before.

And lastly, when I passed a quantity of inflammable air, which had been
mixed with the fumes of spirit of nitre, through a body of water, and
received it in another vessel, it appeared not to have undergone any
change at all, for it went off in several successive explosions, like
the purest inflammable air. The effect above-mentioned must, therefore,
have been owing to the fumes of the spirit of nitre supplying the place
of common air for the purpose of ignition, which is analogous to other
experiments with nitre.

Having had the curiosity, on the 25th of July 1772, to expose a great
variety of different kinds of air to water out of which the air it
contained had been boiled, without any particular view; the result was,
in several respects, altogether unexpected, and led to a variety of new
observations on the properties and affinities of several kinds of air
with respect to water. Among the rest three fourths of that which was
inflammable was absorbed by the water in about two days, and the
remainder was inflammable, but weakly so.

Upon this, I began to agitate a quantity of strong inflammable air in a
glass jar, standing in a pretty large trough of water, the surface of
which was exposed to the common air, and I found that when I had
continued the operation about ten minutes, near one fourth of the
quantity of air had disappeared; and finding that the remainder made an
effervescence with nitrous air, I concluded that it must have become fit
for respiration, whereas this kind of air is, at the first, as noxious
as any other kind whatever. To ascertain this, I put a mouse into a
vessel containing 2-1/2 ounce measures of it, and observed that it lived
in it twenty minutes, which is as long as a mouse will generally live in
the same quantity of common air. This mouse was even taken out alive,
and recovered very well. Still also the air in which it had breathed so
long was inflammable, though very weakly so. I have even found it to be
so when a mouse has actually died in it. Inflammable air thus diminished
by agitation in water, makes but one explosion on the approach of a
candle, exactly like a mixture of inflammable air with common air.

From this experiment I concluded that, by continuing the same process, I
should depriv