There are many things relating to this condensation of the gases worthy of your attention.  Most aeriform bodies, when subjected to compression, are made to occupy a space which diminishes in the exact ratio of the increase of the compressing force.  Very generally, under a force double or triple of the ordinary atmospheric pressure, they become one half or one third their former volume.  This was a long time considered to be a law, and known as the law of Marriotte; but a more accurate study of the subject has demonstrated that this law is by no means of general application.  The volume of certain gases does not decrease in the ratio of the increase of the force used to compress them, but in some, a diminution of their bulk takes place in a far greater degree as the pressure increases.

Again, if ammoniacal gas is reduced by a compressing force to one-sixth of its volume, or carbonic acid is reduced to one thirty-sixth, a portion of them loses entirely the form of a gas, and becomes a liquid, which, when the pressure is withdrawn, assumes again in an instant its gaseous state—­another deviation from the law of Marriotte.

Our process for reducing gases into fluids is of admirable simplicity.  A simple bent tube, or a reduction of temperature by artificial means, have superseded the powerful compressing machines of the early experimenters.

The cyanuret of mercury, when heated in an open glass tube, is resolved into cyanogen gas and metallic mercury; if this substance is heated in a tube hermetically sealed, the decomposition occurs as before, but the gas, unable to escape, and shut up in a space several hundred times smaller than it would occupy as gas under the ordinary atmospheric pressure, becomes a fluid in that part of the tube which is kept cool.

When sulphuric acid is poured upon limestone in an open vessel, carbonic acid escapes with effervescence as a gas, but if the decomposition is effected in a strong, close, and suitable vessel of iron, we obtain the carbonic acid in the state of liquid.  In this manner it may be obtained in considerable quantities, even many pounds weight.  Carbonic acid is separated from other bodies with which it is combined as a fluid under a pressure of thirty-six atmospheres.

The curious properties of fluid carbonic acid are now generally known.  When a small quantity is permitted to escape into the atmosphere, it assumes its gaseous state with extraordinary rapidity, and deprives the remaining fluid of caloric so rapidly that it congeals into a white crystalline mass like snow:  at first, indeed, it was thought to be really snow, but upon examination it proved to be pure frozen carbonic acid.  This solid, contrary to expectation, exercises only a feeble pressure upon the surrounding medium.  The fluid acid inclosed in a glass tube rushes at once, when opened, into a gaseous state, with an explosion which shatters the tube into fragments; but solid carbonic acid can be