On the 20th he worked on the gas obtained from sodagen and potagen, and writes, ‘Barytes gave at the oxygen side, when touched with the wire, an appearance like combustion--a bright rose-coloured light. Mem.: To try what effect the hydrogen side will have upon it.’ On the 21st he again worked on the gas, and says the gas from ether, when properly washed, seemed to be pure hydrogen. He then says, ‘Examined the effect of heat this day and last night of the peculiar substance.’ Then he notes the results, and then he continues, ‘what can be the reason if the metallic globule is composed of A and H (alkaligen and hydrogen)--What is the reason that water and ether and alcohol saturated with potash still act on it so energetically?’ On the 24th he tried the substance with sulphur and phosphorus. On the 25th, 26th, and 27th he worked on barytes, &c. On the 27th barytes heated to whiteness did not become a conductor. On October 30 he was still at work on the gas. On October 31 he says, ‘When the substance amalgamated with mercury, was distilled in a glass retort, and the contents received over mercury, no air was generated; nor over water till the sublimed substance came in contact with the water, when hydrogen was evolved.’ On November 2 he was still working on potagen. ‘Probably this substance combines with oxygen in two proportions, the _red colour_ owing to this; and it is owing to this that it acts upon plate-glass.’ ‘The first oxide a peculiar substance capable of being procured with much difficulty, the second potash.’ In the midst of his discovery the condition of the laboratory made him write in the book ‘some regulations with regard to the state of the laboratory.’ ‘1. Everything is to be put in its proper place in the evening, and everything to be arranged for the next day’s operations. ‘2. The fire to be lighted at eight o’clock, and the apparatus for the experiments to be prepared by nine.’ On November 4 he writes, ‘The result of the distillation of as pure a piece (of potagen) as I could obtain seemed to be hydrogene nearly pure. ‘The gas given out from an amalgam of it with mercury likewise hydrogene.’ On November 5 many experiments were made. On November 6 he still worked on the gas. His notes say ‘on the combustion of sodagen and potagen with oxygen.’ ‘Potagen certainly sublimes unaltered at a temperature below red heat. It is twenty times lighter than mercury.’ On November 13 he wrote to his friend Mr. Pepys: I have decomposed and recomposed the fixed alkalies and discovered their bases to be two new inflammable substitutes very like metals, but one of them lighter than ether and infinitely [more] combustible; so that there are two bodies decomposed and two new elementary bodies found. The Bakerian lecture was read on November 19, only four days before Davy was obliged to take to his bed by illness. The first sketch of this famous paper was thus made in the Laboratory Book: