[11] On this account, if it was thought convenient to introduce a new
term (or rather make a new application of a term already in use among
chemists) it might not be amiss to call air that has been diminished,
and made noxious by any of the processes above mentioned, or others
similar to them, by the common appellation of _phlogisticated air_; and,
if it was necessary, the particular process by which it was
phlogisticated might be added; as common air phlogisticated by charcoal,
air phlogisticated by the calcination of metals, nitrous air
phlogisticated with the liver of sulphur, &c.

[12] Here it becomes me to ask pardon of that excellent philosopher
Father Beccaria of Turin, for conjecturing that the phlogiston, with
which he revivified metals, did not come from the electric matter
itself, but from what was discharged from other pieces of metal with
which he made the experiment. See History of Electricity, p. 277, &c.
This _revivification of metals_ by electricity completes the proof of
the electric matter being, or containing phlogiston.

SECTION III.

_Of NITROUS AIR._

Since the publication of my former papers I have given more attention to
the subject of nitrous air than to any other species of air; and having
been pretty fortunate in my inquiries, I shall be able to lay before my
reader a more satisfactory account of the curious phenomena occasioned
by it, and also of its nature and constitution, than I could do before,
though much still remains to be investigated concerning it, and many new
objects of inquiry are started.

With a view to discover where the power of nitrous air to diminish
common air lay, I evaporated to dryness a quantity of the solution of
copper in diluted spirit of nitre; and having procured from it a
quantity of a _green precipitate_, I threw the focus of a burning-glass
upon it, when it was put into a vessel of quicksilver, standing inverted
in a bason of quicksilver. In this manner I procured air from it, which
appeared to be, in all respects, nitrous air; so that part of the same
principle which had escaped during the solution, in the form of _air_,
had likewise been retained in it, and had not left it in the evaporation
of the water.

With great difficulty I also procured a small quantity of the same kind
of air from a solution of _iron_ in spirit of nitre, by the same
process.

Having, for a different purpose, fired some paper, which had been dipped
in a solution of co