drawn from them.

A quantity of common air saturated with nitrous air was put to a
quantity of acid air, and they continued together all night, without any
sensible effect. The quantity of both remained the same, and water being
admitted to them, it absorbed all the acid air, and left the other just
as before.

A mixture of two thirds of air diminished by iron filings and brimstone,
and one third acid air, were mixed together, and left to stand four
weeks in quicksilver. But when the mixture was examined, water presently
imbibed all the acid air, and the diminished air was found to be just
the same that it was before. I had imagined that the acid air might have
united with the phlogiston with which the diminished air was
overcharged, so as to render it wholsome; and I had read an account of
the stench arising from putrid bodies being corrected by acid fumes.

The remaining experiments, in which the acid air was principally
concerned, are of a miscellaneous nature.

I put a piece of dry _ice_ to a quantity of acid air (as was observed in
the section concerning _alkaline_ air) taking it with a forceps, which,
as well as the air itself, and the quicksilver by which it had been
confined; had been exposed to the open air for an hour, in a pretty
strong frost. The moment it touched the air it was dissolved as fast as
it would have been by being thrown into a hot fire, and the air was
presently imbibed. Putting fresh pieces of ice to that which was
dissolved before, they were also dissolved immediately, and the water
thus procured did not freeze again, though it was exposed a whole night,
in a very intense frost.

Flies and spiders die in acid air, but not so quickly as in nitrous air.
This surprized me very much; as I had imagined that nothing could be
more speedily fatal to all animal life than this pure acid vapour.

As inflammable air, I have observed, fires at one explosion in the
vapour of smoking spirit of nitre, just like an equal mixture of
inflammable and common air, I thought it was possible that the fume
which naturally rises from common spirit of salt might have the same
effect, but it had not. For this purpose I treated the spirit of salt,
as I had before done the smoking spirit of nitre; first filling a phial
with it, then inverting it in a vessel containing a quantity of the same
acid; and having thrown the inflammable air into it, and thereby driven
out all the acid, turning it with its mouth upwards, a