FOOTNOTES:
[2] An account of Mr. Hey's experiments will be found in the Appendix to these papers.
SECTION II.
Of Air in which a Candle, or Brimstone, has burned out.
It is well known that flame cannot subsist long without change of air, so that the common air is necessary to it, except in the case of substances, into the composition of which nitre enters, for these will burn in vacuo, in fixed air, and even under water, as is evident in some rockets, which are made for this purpose. The quantity of air which even a small flame requires to keep it burning is prodigious. It is generally said, that an ordinary candle consumes, as it is called, about a gallon in a minute. Considering this amazing consumption of air, by fires of all kinds, volcanos, &c. it becomes a great object of philosophical inquiry, to ascertain what change is made in the constitution of the air by flame, and to discover what provision there is in nature for remedying the injury which the atmosphere receives by this means. Some of the following experiments will, perhaps, be thought to throw light upon the subject.
The diminution of the quantity of air in which a candle, or brimstone, has burned out, is various; But I imagine that, at a medium, it may be about one fifteenth, or one sixteenth of the whole; which is one third as much as by animal or vegetable substances putrefying in it, by the calcination of metals, or by any of the other causes of the complete diminution of air, which will be mentioned hereafter.
I have sometimes thought, that flame disposes the common air to deposit the fixed air it contains; for if any lime-water be exposed to it, it immediately becomes turbid. This is the case, when wax candles, tallow candles, chips of wood, spirit of wine, ether, and every other substance which I have yet tried, except brimstone, is burned in a close glass vessel, standing in lime-water. This precipitation of fixed air (if this be the case) may be owing to something emitted from the burning bodies, which has a stronger affinity with the other constituent parts of the atmosphere[3].
If brimstone be burned in the same circumstances, the lime-water continues transparent, but still there may have been the same precipitation of the fixed part of the air; but that, uniting with the lime and the vitriolic acid, it forms a selenetic salt, which is soluble in water. Having evaporated a quantity of water thus impregnated, by burning brimstone a great number of times over it, a whitish powder remained, which had an acid taste; but repeating the experiment with a quicker evaporation, the powder had no acidity, but was very much like chalk. The burning of brimstone but once over a quantity of lime-water, will affect it in such a manner, that breathing into it will not make it turbid, which otherwise it always presently does.