Nitrous acid dephlogisticated

In the foregoing essays I have endeavoured to prove as clearly as is possible by physics and chemistry, that the very pure air which Dr. Priestley has denominated dephlogisticated air, enters, as a constituent part, into the composition of several acids, and especially into that of the phosphoric, vitriolic, and nitrous acids. 

This pure air, this dephlogisticated air, whose discovery brings much honor to M. Priestley, which makes part of nitrous acid part of most metallic calces from which one can draw it, would confirm, if it were necessary, as this author remarks, the absence of phlogiston in metallic calces which several moderns have placed in doubt. 

Berthollet s paper on nitrous acid was reviewed by Cadet and Lavoisier. Since Lavoisier had a strong agenda by this time of establishing vital air as the acid principle, it is not possible to discern Berthollet s voice. Berthollet had apparently obtained fixed alkali and dephlogisticated air by heating pure niter. Since niter was composed of nitrous acid and fixed alkali, this meant that nitrous acid was converted to dephlogisticated air. This conclusion contradicted the experiment in which Priestley had obtained much nitrous acid as well as dephlogisti-... 

The liquor condensed in the globe, in weight about 30 grains, was sensibly acid to the taste, and by saturation with fixed alkali, and evaporation, yielded near two grains of nitre so that it consisted of water united to a small quantity of nitrous acid. No sooty matter was deposited in the globe. The dephlogisticated air used in this experiment was procured from red precipitate, that is, from a solution of quicksilver in spirit of nitre distilled till it acquires a red colour. 

In his paper of 1784 Cavendish said, with regard to the presence of acid in the water, either (i) dephlogisticated air contains a little nitrous acid which, when the inflammable air is in a sufficient proportion, unites to the phlogiston,... 

The red nitrous vapour contains three parts of nitrous air [nitric oxide] and one part of dephlogisticated air, or one of phlogisticated air and three of dephlogisticated air.. . . The common straw coloured nitrous acid contains more dephlogisticated air than the red nitrous acid or vapour the proportion appears to be four to one but the colourless contains about five of dephlogisticated to one of phlogisticated air. ... 

We may safely conclude that in the present experiments the phlogisticated air was enabled, by means of the electrical spark, to unite to, or form a chemical combination with, the dephlogisticated air, and was thereby reduced to nitrous acid, which united to the soap-lees, and formed a solution of nitre for in these experiments those two airs actually disappeared, and nitrous acid was actually formed in their room. 

This I consider to be the true state of nitrous air. Let us now suppose another particle of dephlogisticated air c to unite to P, it will combine only with the force of 4, whereby a b c and P will gravitate toward one another. Such is the state of the red nitrous vapour, or the red nitrous acid. 

Let us again suppose a fourth particle of dephlogisticated air d to combine with P, it will unite only with the force of 3f. This I think is the state of the pale or straw-coloured nitrous acid. 

---