I have drawn from this experiment, they will be fully
dissipated by the following experiments, which I am going to adduce in
support of my opinion.

_Experiment Third._

The apparatus being disposed exactly as in the former experiment, with
this difference, that instead of the 28 grs. of charcoal, the tube EF
is filled with 274 grs. of soft iron in thin plates, rolled up
spirally. The tube is made red hot by means of its furnace, and the
water in the retort A is kept constantly boiling till it be all
evaporated, and has passed through the tube EF, so as to be condensed in
the bottle H.

No carbonic acid gas is disengaged in this experiment, instead of which
we obtain 416 cubical inches, or 15 grs. of inflammable gas, thirteen
times lighter than atmospheric air. By examining the water which has
been distilled, it is found to have lost 100 grs. and the 274 grs.
of iron confined in the tube are found to have acquired 85 grs.
additional weight, and its magnitude is considerably augmented. The iron
is now hardly at all attractable by the magnet; it dissolves in acids
without effervescence; and, in short, it is converted into a black oxyd,
precisely similar to that which has been burnt in oxygen gas.

In this experiment we have a true _oxydation_ of iron, by means of
water, exactly similar to that produced in air by the assistance of
heat. One hundred grains of water having been decomposed, 85 grs. of
oxygen have combined with the iron, so as to convert it into the state
of black oxyd, and 15 grs. of a peculiar inflammable gas are
disengaged: From all this it clearly follows, that water is composed of
oxygen combined with the base of an inflammable gas, in the respective
proportions of 85 parts, by weight of the former, to 15 parts of the
latter.

Thus water, besides the oxygen, which is one of its elements in common
with many other substances, contains another element as its constituent
base or radical, and for which we must find an appropriate term. None
that we could think of seemed better adapted than the word _hydrogen_,
which signifies the _generative principle of water_, from [Greek: ydor]
_aqua_, and [Greek: geinomas] _gignor_[17]. We call the combination of
this element with caloric _hydrogen gas_; and the term hydrogen
expresses the base of that gas, or the radical of water.

This experiment furnishes us with a new combustible body, or, in other
words, a body which has so much affinity with oxygen as to dra