21.
and 24. by which the gas is conveyed into the bottles of alkaline
solution 22. 25. should have been made to dip into the liquor, while the
other tubes 23. and 26. which carry off the gas, ought to have been cut
off some way above the surface of the liquor in the bottles.
A few explanatory notes are added; and indeed, from the perspicuity of
the Author, very few were found necessary. In a very small number of
places, the liberty has been taken of throwing to the bottom of the
page, in notes, some parenthetical expressions, only relative to the
subject, which, in their original place, tended to confuse the sense.
These, and the original notes of the Author, are distinguished by the
letter A, and to the few which the Translator has ventured to add, the
letter E is subjoined.
Mr Lavoisier has added, in an Appendix, several very useful Tables for
facilitating the calculations now necessary in the advanced state of
modern chemistry, wherein the most scrupulous accuracy is required. It
is proper to give some account of these, and of the reasons for omitting
several of them.
No. I. of the French Appendix is a Table for converting ounces, gros,
and grains, into the decimal fractions of the French pound; and No. II.
for reducing these decimal fractions again into the vulgar subdivisions.
No. III. contains the number of French cubical inches and decimals which
correspond to a determinate weight of water.
The Translator would most readily have converted these Tables into
English weights and measures; but the necessary calculations must have
occupied a great deal more time than could have been spared in the
period limited for publication. They are therefore omitted, as
altogether useless, in their present state, to the British chemist.
No. IV. is a Table for converting lines or twelfth parts of the inch,
and twelfth parts of lines, into decimal fractions, chiefly for the
purpose of making the necessary corrections upon the quantities of
gasses according to their barometrical pressure. This can hardly be at
all useful or necessary, as the barometers used in Britain are graduated
in decimal fractions of the inch, but, being referred to by the Author
in the text, it has been retained, and is No. I. of the Appendix to
this Translation.
No. V. Is a Table for converting the observed heights of water within
the jars used in pneumato-chemical experiments into correspondent
heights of mercury for correcting the volume of gas
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