This experiment shows that chlorine is only the means to the end, and that it decomposes water, setting free oxygen, which is supposed to exert a high bleaching power in its _nascent_ state, a condition which many gases are imagined to assume just before they take the gaseous state, a sort of intermediate link between the solid or fluid and the gaseous condition of matter. The nascent state may possibly be that of ozone, to which we have already alluded as a powerful bleaching agent. _Ninth Experiment._ A piece of paper dipped in oil of turpentine emits a dense black smoke, and frequently a flash of fire is perceptible, directly it is plunged into a bottle containing chlorine gas; here the gas combines only with the hydrogen of the turpentine, and the carbon is deposited as soot. _Tenth Experiment._ If a lighted taper is plunged into a bottle of chlorine it continues to burn, emitting an enormous quantity of smoke, for the reason already explained, and demonstrating the perfection of the atmosphere in which [Page 135] we live and breathe, and showing that had oxygen gas possessed the same properties as chlorine, the combustion of compounds of hydrogen and carbon would have been impossible, in consequence of the enormous quantity of soot which would have been produced, so that some other element that would freely enter into combination with it must have been provided to produce both artificial light and heat. Chlorine is a gas which cannot be inhaled, and ozone presents the same features, as a mouse confined for a short time with an excess of ozone soon died; but ozone is the extraordinary condition of oxygen; the element in the ordinary state is harmless, and is the one which enters so largely into the composition of the air we breathe. _Eleventh Experiment._ When one volume of olefiant gas (prepared by boiling one measure of alcohol and three of sulphuric acid) is mixed with two volumes of chlorine, and the two gases agitated together in a long glass vessel for a few seconds, with a glass plate over the top, which should have a welt ground perfectly flat, they unite on the application of flame, with the production of a great cloud of black smoke, arising from the deposited carbon, whilst a sort of roaring noise is heard during the time that the flame passes from the top to the foot of the glass. (Fig. 134.) [Illustration: Fig. 134. Remarkable deposition of carbon during the combustion of one volume of olefiant gas with two of chlorine.] _Twelfth Experiment._