"When mercury is heated nearly to its boiling point in air, it is very slowly changed to a red powder, which used to be called calcined mercury. Lavoisier made a quantitative study of this change. ...(Fig. 1) The mercury was heated nearly to its boiling point by a furnace; red specks appeared on the surface of the mercury, and the volume of air in the bell-jar gradually decreased. The production of the red solid seemed to cease after some days, but the heating was continued for a few days longer (12 days in all). The volume of air in the bell-jar at the end of the experiment was noted; the red solid was collected, and weighed, and placed in a small glass bulb... (Fig. 2). When the red solid was strongly heated, mercury appeared on the upper and colder parts of the glass bulb, and a colourless gas collected in the graduated vessel. The heating was continued until the whole of the red powder disappeared... An examination of the gas collected in the cylinder proved it to be the substance which is now called oxygen."
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The Elements of Chemistry (Muir)
The Elements of Chemistry was written by Matthew Moncrieff Pattison Muir and published in 1904. Muir was a Praelector and Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge and head of their Caius Laboratory.
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