It did not appear that the addition of acids, enabled the water to yield more air, nor did he succeed in attempting to convert the whole of a given quantity of water into air, although exposing the water confined over mercury to heat, and separating the air produced, it still continued to produce more air for twenty or thirty repetitions of the experiments. When a certain proportion of air was thus produced at any one time, no continuance of the experiment would encrease the quantity until it was separated. Hence he concludes that the longest continuance of water in the state of vapour would not convert it into air. The water used was pure distilled water previously boiled to separate any adventitious air that might have been imbibed from the atmosphere. The precautions he used, and the replies to such objections as he foresaw the experiment would be liable to, are detailed in the papers he published on the subject, to wit, a separate pamphlet published in England in 1793, and a communication in the Am. Ph. trans, v. IV. p. 11-20. In the last mentioned paper, he proceeds also to give an account of some experiments on the property of water to imbibe different kinds of air, and the conversion of sp. of wine, into inflammable air. This paper inserted in the American transactions, was read before that society in Feb. 1796. In Ap. 1800 another paper was read before the same society on the production of air by the freezing of water Am. Ph. trans. v. V. p. 36. In this paper he recapitulates the general result of his former experiments on the generation of air from water, namely “that after all air had been extracted from any quantity of water by heat or by taking off the pressure of the atmosphere, whenever any portion of it was converted into vapour, a bubble of permanent air was formed, and this was always phlogisticated. The process with the Torricellian vacuum (he says) I continued for some years and found the production of air equable to the last. The necessary inference from this experiment is, that water is convertible into phlogisticated air, or that it contains more of this air intimately combined with it than can be extricated from these processes in any reasonable time.”