experiment, and was making it when Dr. Paris came into the laboratory as he has described, and my thoughts at that moment are embodied and expressed in my paper in the following words: "I at first thought that muriatic acid and euchlorine had been formed; then that two new hydrates of chlorine had been produced; but at last I suspected that the chlorine had been entirely separated from the water by the heat, and condensed into a dry fluid by the mere pressure of its own abundant vapour[1]." I then describe an experiment entirely of my own, in which I proceed to verify this conjecture, and go on to say, Presuming that I had now a right to consider the yellow fluid as pure chlorine in the liquid state, I proceeded to examine its properties, &c. &c.[2]"
To this paper Sir Humphry Davy added a note[3], in which he says, "In desiring Mr. Faraday to expose the hydrate of chlorine to heat in a closed glass tube[4], it occurred to me that one of three things would happen: that it would become fluid as a hydrate; or that a decomposition of water would occur, and euchlorine and muriatic acid he formed; or that the chlorine would separate in a "condensed state." And then he makes the subject his own by condensing muriatic acid, and states that he had "requested" me (of course as Chemical Assistant) to pursue these experiments, and to extend them to all the gases which are of considerable density, or to any extent soluble in water;" &c. This I did; and when he favoured me by requesting that I would write a paper on the results, I began it by stating "that Sir Humphry Davy did me the honour to request I would continue the experiments, which I have done under his general direction, and the following are some of the results already obtained[5]:" and this paper being immediately followed by one on the application of these liquids as mechanical agents, by Sir Humphry Davy[6], he says in it, "One of the principal objects that I had in view in causing experiments to be made on the condensation of different gaseous bodies, by generating them under pressure, &c."
