casion of
several new and important observations) I found that 19/20 of the whole
was absorbed. Perceiving, to my great surprize, that so very great a
proportion of this kind of air was miscible with water, I immediately
began to agitate a considerable quantity of it, in a jar standing in a
trough of the same kind of water; and, with about four times as much
agitation as fixed air requires, it was so far absorbed by the water,
that only about one fifth remained. This remainder extinguished flame,
and was noxious to animals.

Afterwards I diminished a pretty large quantity of nitrous air to one
eighth of its original bulk, and the remainder still retained much of
its peculiar smell, and diminished common air a little. A mouse also
died in it, but not so suddenly as it would have done in pure nitrous
air. In this operation the peculiar smell of nitrous air is very
manifest, the water being first impregnated with the air, and then
transmitting it to the common atmosphere.

This experiment gave me the hint of impregnating water with nitrous air,
in the manner in which I had before done it with fixed air; and I
presently found that distilled water would imbibe about one tenth of its
bulk of this kind of air, and that it acquired a remarkably acid and
astringent taste from it. The smell of water thus impregnated is at
first peculiarly pungent. I did not chuse to swallow any of it, though,
for any thing that I know, it may be perfectly innocent, and perhaps, in
some cases, salutary.

This kind of air is retained very obstinately by water. In an exhausted
receiver a quantity of water thus saturated emitted a whitish fume, such
as sometimes issues from bubbles of this air when it is first generated,
and also some air-bubbles; but though it was suffered to stand a long
time in this situation, it still retained its peculiar taste; but when
it had stood all night pretty near the fire, the water was become quite
vapid, and had deposited a filmy kind of matter, of which I had often
collected a considerable quantity from the trough in which jars
containing this air had stood. This I suppose to be a precipitate of the
metal, by the solution of which the nitrous air was generated. I have
not given so much attention to it as to know, with certainty, in what
circumstances this _deposit_ is made, any more than I do the matter
deposited from inflammable air above-mentioned; for I cannot get it, at
least in any considerable quantity, when