oxygen. For this purpose the mercury oxide is placed in a glass tube or retort,19 to which a gas delivery tube is attached by means of a cork. This tube is bent downwards, as shown in the drawing (Fig. 1). The open end of the gas delivery tube is immersed in a vessel filled with water, called a pneumatic trough.20 When the gas begins to be evolved in the retort it is obliged, having no other outlet, to escape through the gas delivery tube into the water in the pneumatic trough, and therefore its evolution will be rendered visible by the bubbles coming from this
In heating the retort containing the mercury oxide, the air contained in the apparatus is first partly expelled, owing to its expansion by heat, and then the peculiar gas called ‘oxygen’ is evolved, and may be easily collected as it comes off.
For this purpose a vessel (an ordinary cylinder, as in the drawing) is filled quite full with water and its mouth closed; it is then inverted and placed in this position under the water in the trough; the mouth is then opened. The cylinder will remain full of water—that is, the water will remain at a higher level in it than in the surrounding vessel, owing to the atmospheric pressure. The atmosphere presses on the surface of the water in the trough, and prevents the water from flowing out of the cylinder. The mouth of the cylinder is placed over the end of the gas delivery tube,21 and the bubbles issuing from it will rise into the cylinder and displace the water contained in it. Gases are generally collected in this manner.
When a sufficient quantity of gas has accumulated in the cylinder it can be clearly shown that it is not air, but another gas which is distinguished by its capacity for vigorously supporting combustion.
In order to show this, the cylinder is closed, under water, and removed from the bath; its mouth is then turned upwards, and a smouldering taper plunged into it.
As is well known, a smouldering taper will be extinguished in air, but in the gas which is given off from red mercury oxide it burns clearly and vigorously, showing the property possessed by this gas for supporting combustion more energetically than air, and thus enabling it to be distinguished from the latter.
It may be observed in this experiment that, besides the formation of oxygen, metallic mercury is formed, which, volatilising at the high temperature required for the reaction, condenses on the cooler parts of the retort as a mirror or in globules.
Thus two substances, mercury and oxygen, are obtained by heating red mercury oxide. In this reaction, from one substance, two new substances are produced—that is, a decomposition has taken place.
The means of collecting and investigating gases were known before Lavoisier's time, but he first showed the real part they played in the processes of many chemical changes which before his era were either wrongly understood (as will be afterwards explained) or were not explained at all, but only observed in their superficial aspects.
This experiment on red mercury oxide has a special significance in the history of chemistry contemporary with Lavoisier, because the oxygen gas which is here evolved is contained in the atmosphere, and plays a most important part in nature, especially in the respiration of animals, in combustion in air, and in the formation of rusts or scoriæ (earths, as they were then called) from metals—that is, of earthy substances, like the ores from which metals are extracted.