Having these data, it was easy to select tubes abundantly sufficient in strength to sustain any force which was likely to be exerted within them in any given experiment.
The gauge used to estimate the degree of pressure to which the gas within the condensing tube was subjected was of the same kind as those formerly described,[1] being a small tube of glass closed at one end with a cylinder of mercury moving in it. So the expression of ten or twenty atmospheres, means a force which is able to compress a given portion of air into 110th or 120th of its bulk at the pressure of one atmosphere of thirty inches of mercury. These gauges had their graduation marked on them with a black varnish, and also with Indian ink:—there are several of the gases which, when condensed, cause the varnish to liquefy, but then the Indian ink stood. For further precaution, an exact copy of the gauge was taken on paper, to be applied on the outside of the condensing tube. In most cases, when the experiment was over, the pressure was removed from the interior of the apparatus, to ascertain whether the mercury in the gauge would return back to its first or starting-place.
For the application of cold to these tubes a bath of Thilorier's mixture of solid carbonic acid and ether was used. An earthenware dish of the capacity of four cubic inches or more was fitted into a similar dish somewhat larger, with three or four folds of dry flannel intervening, and then the bath mixture was made in the inner dish. Such a bath will easily continue for twenty or thirty minutes, retaining solid carbonic acid the whole time; and the glass tubes used would sustain sudden immersion in it without breaking.
But as my hopes of any success beyond that heretofore
- ↑ Philosophical Transactions, 1823, p. 192.
