Phlogisticated marine acid air is heavier than common air. It extinguishes a candle with a blue flame. It dissolves many substances containing phlogiston, as iron, dry flesh, &c. and thereby forms a little inflammable air. Water absorbs 360 times its bulk of this air, and is then the strongest spirit of salt. It absorbs one-sixth more than its bulk of alkaline air, and with it forms the common sal ammoniac. Its affinity to water enables it to dissolve ice, and to deprive borax, nitre, and other saline substances, of the water that enters into their composition.
LECTURE IX.
Of Vitriolic Acid Air.
Vitriolic acid air is procured by heating in hot acid of vitriol almost any substance containing phlogiston, especially the metals which are soluble in that acid, as copper, mercury, &c. This kind of air is heavier than common air, and extinguishes a candle, but without any particular colour of its flame. It will not dislodge the nitrous or marine acids from any substance containing them.
By its affinity to water it deprives borax of it.
One measure of this air saturates two of alkaline air, and with it forms the vitriolic ammoniac.
Water imbibes between 30 and 40 times its bulk of this air, and retains it when frozen. Water thus impregnated dissolves some metals, and thereby yields inflammable air.
If this water be confined in a glass tube, together with common air, and be exposed to a long continued heat, it forms real sulphur, the dephlogisticated part of the common air being imbibed, and forming real vitriolic acid, which uniting with the phlogiston in the air, forms the sulphur. Also this air mixed with atmospheric air will, without heat, imbibe some part of it, and thereby become the common acid of vitriol; so that water impregnated with vitriolic acid air, commonly called sulphureous, or phlogisticated acid of vitriol, wants dephlogisticated air to make it the common acid of of vitriol.