use of lime-water in this experiment, I make no doubt
but it would have become turbid.

If a quantity of lime-water in a phial be put under a glass vessel
standing in water, it will not become turbid, and provided the access of
the common air be prevented, it will continue lime-water, I do not know
how long; but if a mouse be left to putrefy in the vessel, the water
will deposit all its lime in a few days. This is owing to the fixed air
deposited by the common air, and perhaps also from more fixed air
discharged from the putrefying substances in some part of the process of
putrefaction.

The air that is discharged from putrefying substances seems, in some
cases, to be chiefly fixed air, with the addition of some other
effluvium, which has the power of diminishing common air. The
resemblance between the true putrid effluvium and fixed air in the
following experiment, which is as decisive as I can possibly contrive
it, appeared to be very great; indeed much greater than I had expected.
I put a dead mouse into a tall glass vessel, and having filled the
remainder with quicksilver, and set it, inverted, in a pot of
quicksilver, I let it stand about two months, in which time the putrid
effluvium issuing from the mouse had filled the whole vessel, and part
of the dissolved blood, which lodged upon the surface of the
quicksilver, began to be thrown out. I then filled another glass vessel,
of the same size and shape, with as pure fixed air as I could make, and
exposed them both, at the same time, to a quantity of lime-water. In
both cases the water grew turbid alike, it rose equally fast in both the
vessels, and likewise equally high; so that about the same quantity
remained unabsorbed by the water. One of these kinds of air, however,
was exceedingly sweet and pleasant, and the other insufferably
offensive; one of them also would have made an addition to any quantity
of common air, with which it had been mixed, and the other would have
diminished it. This, at least, would have been the consequence, if the
mouse itself had putrefied in any quantity of common air.

It seems to depend, in some measure, upon the _time_, and other
circumstances, in the dissolution of animal or vegetable substances,
whether they yield the proper putrid effluvium, or fixed, or inflammable
air; but the experiments which I have made upon this subject, have not
been numerous enough to enable me to decide with certainty concerning
those circumstances.