[11] The compounds which he supposed to be thus produced are of a very questionable nature; with respect to that formed with the Olefiant gas, he was evidently in error.
He quitted Florence on the 3rd, and having visited Sienna, entered Rome on the 6th of April. The Continent having now become accessible, he met with many of his English friends: but neither the extended society by which he was surrounded, nor the classical attractions of the city of the Cæsars, allured him from the pursuits of Science. We find that, shortly after his arrival, he renewed his researches on the combustion of different kinds of charcoal, in the laboratory of the Academia del Lyncei, in which he was assisted by SIG. MORRICHINI and BARLOCCI, Professors of the College Sapienza at Rome. Having arranged the results of this investigation, together with those relating to the combustion of the diamond, which he had previously obtained at Florence, he transmitted a paper to the Royal Society, entitled "Some Experiments on the Combustion of the Diamond, and other carbonaceous substances;" which was read on the 23rd of June, and published in the Second Part of the Philosophical Transactions for the year 1814.
No sooner had it been established by various accurate experiments, that the diamond and common charcoal consumed nearly the same quantity of oxygen in combustion, and produced a gas having the same obvious qualities, than various conjectures were formed to explain the remarkable differences in the sensible qualities of these bodies, by supposing some minute difference in their chemical composition. MM. Biot and Arrago, from the high refractive power of the diamond, suspected that it might contain hydrogen. Guyton Morveau inferred from his experiments that it was pure carbon, and that charcoal was an oxide of carbon; whereas Davy was inclined to believe, from the circumstance of the non-conducting power of the diamond, as well as from the action of potassium upon it, that a minute portion of oxygen might enter its composition, although such a supposition would be at variance with the doctrine of definite proportions; but more lately, in his account of some new experiments on the fluoric compounds, he hazarded the idea that it might be the carbonaceous principle combined with some new and subtile element, belonging to the same class as oxygen, chlorine, and fluorine, which has hitherto escaped detection, but which may be expelled, or newly combined, during its combustion in oxygen. "That some chemical difference," says Davy, "must exist between the hardest and most beautiful of the gems and charcoal, between a nonconductor and a conductor of electricity, it is scarcely possible, notwithstanding the elaborate experiments that have been made on the subject, to doubt: and it seems reasonable to expect, that a very refined or perfect chemistry will confirm the analogies of Nature, and show that bodies cannot be exactly the same in composition or chemical nature, and yet totally different in all their physical properties."