The second section of the volume deals with experiments and observations made in 1773 and the beginning of 1774, and opens with an account of the discovery of ammonia gas.

“After I had made the discovery of the marine acid air, which the vapour of spirit of salt may properly enough be called ... it occurred to me that by a process similar to that by which this acid air is expelled from the spirit of salt an alkaline air might be expelled from substances containing volatile alkali.

“Accordingly I procured some volatile spirit of sal ammoniac, and having put it into a thin phial, and heated it with the flame of a candle, I presently found that a great quantity of vapour was discharged from it; and being received in a vessel of quicksilver, standing in a basin of quicksilver, it continued in the form of a transparent and permanent air, not at all condensed by cold; so that I had the same opportunity of making experiments upon it as I had before on the acid air, being in the same favourable circumstances.... Wanting, however, to procure this air in greater quantities, and this method being rather expensive, it occurred to me that alkaline air might probably be procured, with the most ease and convenience, from the original materials, mixed in the same proportions that chemists had found by experience to answer the best for the production of the volatile spirit of sal ammoniac. Accordingly I mixed one-fourth of pounded sal ammoniac with three-fourths of slaked lime; and filling a phial with the mixture, I presently found it completely answered my purpose. The heat of a candle expelled from this mixture a prodigious quantity of alkaline air; and the same materials ... would serve me a considerable time without changing....”

He next studied the properties of the alkaline air. He found, of course, it was readily soluble in water.

“Having satisfied myself with respect to the relation that alkaline air bears to water, I was impatient to find what would be the consequence of mixing this new air with the other kinds with which I was acquainted before, and especially with acid air; having a notion that these two airs, being of opposite natures, might compose a neutral air, and perhaps the very same thing with common air. But the moment that these two kinds of air came into contact a beautiful white cloud was formed, and presently filled the whole vessel in which they were contained.... When the cloud was subsided there appeared to be formed a solid white salt, which was found to be the common sal ammoniac, or the marine acid united to the volatile alkali....

“Fixed air admitted to alkaline air formed oblong and slender crystals.... These crystals must be the same thing with the volatile alkalis which chemists get in a solid form by the distillation of sal ammoniac with fixed alkaline salts....

“Alkaline air, I was surprised to find, is slightly inflammable....

“That alkaline air is lighter than acid air is evident from the appearances that attend the mixture, which are indeed very beautiful. When acid air is introduced into a vessel containing alkaline air, the white cloud which they form appears at the bottom only and ascends gradually. But when the alkaline air is put to the acid the whole becomes immediately cloudy quite to the top of the vessel.”

Up to now Priestley had mainly confined himself to the narration of the new facts which he had discovered, barely mentioning any hypotheses that occurred to him.

“The reason why I was so much upon my guard in this respect was lest, in consequence of attaching myself to any hypothesis too soon, the success of my future inquiries might be obstructed. But subsequent experiments having thrown great light upon the preceding ones, and having confirmed the few conjectures I then advanced, I may now venture to speak of my hypotheses with a little less diffidence. Still, however, I shall be ready to relinquish any notions I may now entertain if new facts should hereafter appear not to favour them.”

In a paper on “Common Air Diminished and made Noxious by Various Processes” he attempts to apply the current doctrine of phlogiston to account for the various phenomena he has observed, and with what success may be inferred from his conclusion

“that in the precipitation of lime by breathing into lime-water, the fixed air, which incorporates with lime, comes not from the lungs but from the common air, decomposed by the phlogiston exhaled from them, and discharged, after having been taken in with the aliment, and having performed its function in the animal system.”

Priestley’s attempts at theorising brought little satisfaction to him or to his readers. Indeed he says:—

“I begin to be apprehensive lest, after being considered as a dry experimenter, I should pass into the opposite character of a visionary theorist.... In extenuation of my offence let it, however, be considered that theory and experiments necessarily go hand-in-hand, every process being intended to ascertain some particular hypothesis, which, in fact, is only a conjecture concerning the circumstances or the cause of some natural operation; consequently that the boldest and most original experimenters are those who, giving free scope to their imaginations, admit the combination of the most distant ideas; and that though many of these associations of ideas will be wild and chimerical, yet that others will have the chance of giving rise to the greatest and most capital discoveries, such as very cautious, timid, sober and slow-thinking people would never have come at.

“Sir Isaac Newton himself, notwithstanding the great advantage which he derived from a habit of patient thinking, indulged bold and eccentric thoughts, of which his queries at the end of his book of Optics are a sufficient evidence. And a quick conception of distant analogies, which is the great key to unlock the secrets of Nature, is by no means incompatible with the spirit of perseverance in investigations calculated to ascertain and pursue those analogies.”

After this apologia, Priestley gives the reins to his imagination, or rather he allows phlogiston to drive the halting, ambling thing for him, with the result that he utterly loses his way and is eventually landed into an impassable quagmire. It is not too much to say that not one of the “Queries, Speculations and Hints” with which the volume closes has stood the test of time.

The second volume, which made its appearance towards the end of 1775, is dedicated to Sir John Pringle, at that time President of the Royal Society. It opens, as usual, with a somewhat prolix but characteristic preface. But to his biographer Priestley’s prefaces are not the least interesting or valuable of his literary productions.

“In a preface,” he says, “authors have always claimed a right of saying whatever they pleased concerning themselves, and not to lose this right it must now and then be exercised.”

In this respect Priestley has championed the prerogatives of authors for all time. This particular preface begins with an expression of self-laudation for the little delay the writer made in putting the first volume to the press.

“In consequence of this considerable discoveries have been made by people of distant nations; and this branch of science, of which nothing, in a manner, was known till very lately, indeed now bids fair to be farther advanced than any other in the whole compass of natural philosophy.... And it will not now be thought very assuming to say that by working in a tub of water or a basin of quicksilver we may perhaps discover principles of more extensive influence than even that of gravity itself, the discovery of which, in its full extent, contributed so much to immortalise the name of Newton.

“Having been the means of bringing so many champions into the field, I shall, with peculiar pleasure, attend to all their achievements, in order to prepare myself, as I promised in the preface to my last volume, for writing the history of the campaign.”

After a delightfully naïve compliment to his own ability as an accumulator of facts, and to his merits as an “instrument in the hands of Divine Providence ... concerning which I threw out some further hints in my former preface, which the excellent French translator was not permitted to insert in his version,” he advances this testimony to his impartiality as an historian:—

“I even think that I may flatter myself so much, if it be any flattery, as to say that there is not, in the whole compass of philosophical writing, a history of experiments so truly ingenuous as mine, and especially the section on the discovery of dephlogisticated air, which I will venture to exhibit as a model of the kind. I am not conscious to myself of having concealed the least hint that was suggested to me by any person whatever, any kind of assistance that has been given me, or any views or hypotheses by which the experiments were directed, whether they were verified by the result or not.”

There is much else in the preface that might be quoted as illustrative of the character and mental attributes of its author. Priestley, the natural philosopher, never forgot that he was a minister of religion, and that to him theology was the greatest and most important of all the sciences, and he cannot forbear even, in what he intended to be a scientific disquisition on purely natural phenomena, from inculcating his belief in the divine origin of Christianity and his opinion concerning the doctrine of purgatory and the worship of the dead.

The first chapter is concerned with the discovery of what its author called Vitriolic Acid Air, but which we now know as sulphur dioxide.

Priestley imagined that as the liquid marine acid—that is hydrochloric acid—readily yielded an “air” on heating it might be that vitriolic acid, or oil of vitriol, would also afford a characteristic “air” when treated in a similar manner. Acting upon a suggestion of Mr Lane he heated oil of vitriol with olive oil, when he readily obtained a new species of air, which he collected over mercury as he “had been used to do it with the marine acid air; and the whole process was as pleasing and as elegant.” Priestley at once surmised that the olive oil worked by transferring its phlogiston to the vitriolic acid, and he naturally concluded that any substance rich in phlogiston would bring about the same result. He next tried charcoal.

“I put some bits of charcoal into my phial instead of the oil or other inflammable matter which I had used before, and applying the flame of a candle I presently found that the vitriolic acid air was produced as well as in the former process, and in several respects more conveniently, the production of air being equable, whereby the disagreeable effect of a sudden explosion is avoided.... Finding that a great variety of substances containing phlogiston enabled the oil of vitriol to throw out a permanent acid air, I had some suspicion that mere heat might do the same, but I did not find that there was any foundation for that suspicion.... But though I got no air from the oil of vitriol by this process, air was produced at the same time in a manner that I little expected, and I paid pretty dearly for the discovery it occasioned. Despairing to get any air from the longer application of my candles, I withdrew them, but before I could disengage the phial from the vessel of quicksilver a little of it passed through the tube into the hot acid, when instantly it was all filled with dense white fumes, a prodigious quantity of air was generated, the tube through which it was transmitted was broken into many pieces, and part of the hot acid being spilled upon my hand burned it terribly, so that the effect of it is visible to this day. The inside of the phial was coated with a white saline substance, and the smell that issued from it was extremely suffocating.

“This accident taught me what I am surprised I should not have suspected before, viz., that some metals will part with their phlogiston to hot oil of vitriol, and thereby convert it into a permanent elastic air, producing the very same effect with oil, charcoal, or any other inflammable substance.

“Not discouraged by the disagreeable accident above mentioned, the next day I put a little quicksilver into the phial with the ground stopple and tube, along with the oil of vitriol, when, long before it was boiling hot, air issued plentifully from it, and being received in a vessel of quicksilver appeared to be genuine vitriolic acid air, exactly like that which I had procured before, being readily imbibed by water and extinguishing a candle in the same manner as the other had done....

“After this I repeated the experiment with several other metals.... Copper treated in the same manner yielded air very freely, with about the same degree of heat that quicksilver had required, and the air continued to be generated with very little application of more heat.”

The theory apart, this paper is as important as these on ammonia and the marine acid air, and exhibits Priestley at his best. The observations he makes concerning the main properties of the new gas and its solubility in water, its inability to burn and to support flame, its heaviness, its power to unite with ammonia, to be absorbed by charcoal and to liquefy camphor, are all accurate.

“Having hit upon a method of exhibiting some of the acids in the form of air, nothing could be easier than to extend this process to the rest.”

Accordingly he attempted to procure what he called the vegetable acid air by heating “exceedingly strong concentrated acid of vinegar,” and states that he succeeded in obtaining an air which extinguished the flame of a candle and was soluble in water. The paper is very short and is full of contradictions. In reality, as he subsequently found, he was dealing with vinegar largely adulterated with oil of vitriol. The “vegetable acid air” had no real existence.

The next paper in the series is the most important of the whole, and the one of all others that has contributed most largely to Priestley’s reputation. It is entitled “Of Dephlogisticated Air, and of the Constitution of the Atmosphere,” and deals with the discovery of oxygen. It begins in the following characteristic fashion:—

“The contents of this section will furnish a very striking illustration of the truth of a remark which I have more than once made in my philosophical writings, and which can hardly be too often repeated, as it tends greatly to encourage philosophical investigations, viz., that more is owing to what we call chance—that is, philosophically speaking, to the observation of events arising from unknown causes than to any proper design or preconceived theory in this business. This does not appear in the works of those who write synthetically upon these subjects, but would, I doubt not, appear very strikingly in those who are the most celebrated for their philosophical acumen did they write analytically and ingenuously.

“For my own part, I will frankly acknowledge that at the commencement of the experiments recited in this section I was so far from having formed any hypothesis that led to the discoveries I made in pursuing them that they would have appeared very improbable to me had I been told of them; and when the decisive facts did at length obtrude themselves upon my notice it was very slowly, and with great hesitation, that I yielded to the evidence of my senses. And yet, when I reconsider the matter, and compare my last discoveries relating to the constitution of the atmosphere with the first, I see the closest and the easiest connection in the world between them, so as to wonder that I should not have been led immediately from the one to the other. That this was not the case I attribute to the force of prejudice which, unknown to ourselves, biases not only our judgments, properly so called, but even the perceptions of our senses; for we may take a maxim so strongly for granted that the plainest evidence of sense will not entirely change, and often hardly modify, our persuasions; and the more ingenious a man is, the more effectually he is entangled in his errors, his ingenuity only helping him to deceive himself by evading the force of truth.”

He then points out that there are few maxims in philosophy that have laid firmer hold upon the mind than that air, meaning atmospherical air ... is a simple elementary substance, indestructible and unalterable, at least as much so as water was supposed to be. Priestley, in the course of his inquiries, was soon satisfied that atmospherical air was not an unalterable thing; that bodies burning in it, and animals breathing it and various other chemical processes, so far alter and deprive it as to render it altogether unfit for the purposes to which it is subservient; and he had discovered methods, particularly the process of vegetation, which tended to restore it to its original purity.

“But,” he says, “I own I had no idea of the possibility of going any further in this way and thereby procuring air purer than the best common air.”

As this paper is one of the classics of chemistry, as well as the chief corner-stone in the monument which Priestley erected to himself, it is necessary to examine it, as well as certain other papers which grew immediately out of it, in some degree of detail.

After a reference to a hypothesis of the origin and constitution of the atmosphere which occurs among the “Queries, Speculations and Hints” above referred to, and which is on a par with much in Priestley’s speculations, he proceeds to relate the circumstances which more immediately led to the most important of all his discoveries. It was the accident of possessing a burning lens of “considerable force,” for want of which he could not possibly make many of the experiments that he had projected.

“But having afterwards procured a lens of twelve inches diameter and twenty inches focal distance, I proceeded with great alacrity to examine, by the help of it, what kind of air a great variety of substances, natural and factitious, would yield, putting them into vessels [short, wide, round-bottomed phials], which I filled with quicksilver and kept inverted in a basin of the same. Mr Warltire, a good chemist, and lecturer in Natural Philosophy, happening to be at that time in Calne, I explained my views to him, and was furnished by him with many substances, which I could not otherwise have procured.

“With this apparatus, after a variety of other experiments, an account of which will be found in its proper place on the 1st August 1774, I endeavoured to extract air from mercurius calcinatus per se;[17] and I presently found that, by means of this lens, air was expelled from it very readily. Having got about three or four times as much as the bulk of my materials, I admitted water to it, and found that it was not imbibed by it. But what surprised me more than I can well express was that a candle burned in this air with a remarkably vigorous flame, very much like that enlarged flame with which a candle burns in nitrous air exposed to iron or liver of sulphur,[18] but as I had got nothing like this remarkable appearance from any kind of air besides this particular modification of nitrous air, and I knew no nitrous acid was used in the preparation of mercurius calcinatus, I was utterly at a loss how to account for it.

“In this case also, though I did not give sufficient attention to the circumstance at that time, the flame of the candle, besides being larger, burned with more splendour and heat than in that species of nitrous air; and a piece of red-hot wood sparkled in it, exactly like paper dipped in a solution of nitre, and it consumed very fast; an experiment which I had never thought of trying with nitrous air.

“At the same time that I made the above-mentioned experiment I extracted a quantity of air with the very same property from the common red precipitate[19] which, being produced by a solution of mercury in spirit of nitre (nitric acid), made me conclude that this peculiar property, being similar to that of the modification of nitrous air above mentioned, depended upon something being communicated to it by the nitrous acid; and since the mercurius calcinatus is produced by exposing mercury to a certain degree of heat, where common air has access to it, I likewise concluded that this substance had collected something of nitre, in that state of heat, from the atmosphere.

“This, however, appearing to me much more extraordinary than it ought to have done, I entertained some suspicion that the mercurius calcinatus on which I had made my experiments, being bought at a common apothecary’s, might, in fact, be nothing more than red precipitate; though, had I been anything of a practical chemist, I could not have entertained any such suspicion. However, mentioning this suspicion to Mr Warltire, he furnished me with some that he had kept for a specimen of the preparation, and which, he told me, he could warrant to be genuine. This being treated in the same manner as the former, only by a longer continuance of heat, I extracted much more air from it than from the other.

“This experiment might have satisfied any moderate sceptic; but, however, being at Paris in the October following, and knowing that there were several very eminent chemists in that place, I did not omit the opportunity, by means of my friend Mr Magellan, to get an ounce of mercurius calcinatus prepared by Mr Cadet, of the genuineness of which there could not possibly be any suspicion; and at the same time I frequently mentioned my surprise at the kind of air which I had got from this preparation to Mr Lavoisier, Mr le Roy, and several other philosophers, who honoured me with their notice in that city, and who, I daresay, cannot fail to recollect the circumstance.”

This last remark is significant in reference to a claim which was subsequently put forward that the real discoverer of oxygen was Lavoisier, and that he obtained it by heating mercuric oxide.[20]

Priestley also obtained the same air from red lead, which, he says,

“confirmed me more in my suspicion that the mercurius calcinatus must get the property of yielding this kind of air from the atmosphere, the process by which that preparation and this of red lead is made being similar. As I never make the least secret of anything that I observe, I mentioned this experiment also, as well as those with the mercurius calcinatus and the red precipitate, to all my philosophical acquaintance at Paris and elsewhere, having no idea, at that time, to what these remarkable facts would lead.” [Nitrous oxide.]

Priestley, on his return to England, made an experiment with Cadet’s preparation, which he found to behave precisely like that he had procured from Warltire. He observed that the new gas was only sparingly soluble in water and that its power of causing a candle to burn with a strong flame was in nowise diminished by agitation with water—facts which he said convinced him

“that there must be a very material difference between the constitution of the air from mercurius calcinatus and that of phlogisticated nitrous air, [nitrous oxide] notwithstanding their resemblance in some particulars.”

It was not, however, until the following March (1775) (he having meanwhile been intent upon his experiments on the vitriolic air [sulphur dioxide]), that he ascertained the real nature of the new air, and was led “though very gradually ... to the complete discovery of the constitution of the air we breathe.” By trials with the nitrous air and with mice he found that the new gas was eminently fit for respiration: nitrous air reduced its volume to a greater extent than in the case of common air, and a mouse lived longer in it than it would in the same volume of common air.

“Thinking of this extraordinary fact upon my pillow, the next morning I put another measure of nitrous air to the same mixture, and to my utter astonishment found that it was farther diminished to almost one-half of its original quantity.”

Priestley now utterly missed his way for a time. He sought to get the new air from the various oxides of lead, but the fetish of phlogiston again led him wrong, and eventually by a train of reasoning which is fully set forth in the paper, but which need not here be repeated, there remained, he says, no doubt in his mind

“but that atmospherical air, or the thing that we breathe, consists of the nitrous acid and earth, with so much phlogiston as is necessary to its elasticity; and likewise so much more as is required to bring it from its state of perfect purity to the mean condition in which we find it.”

Priestley’s “complete discovery of the constitution of the air we breathe” was thus wholly erroneous: he was very far indeed from having a clear conception of its real nature.

Priestley’s description of the main properties of oxygen is however accurate, and lecturers in chemistry are indebted to him for some striking experimental illustrations of them.

“I easily conjectured,” he says, “that inflammable air would explode with more violence and a louder report by the help of dephlogisticated than of common air; but the effect far exceeded my expectations, and it has never failed to surprise every person before whom I have made the experiment.... The dipping of a lighted candle into a jar filled with dephlogisticated air is alone a very beautiful experiment. The strength and vivacity of the flame is striking, and the heat produced by the flame in these circumstances is also remarkably great.... Nothing would be easier than to augment the force of fire to a prodigious degree by blowing it with dephlogisticated air instead of common air.... Possibly platina might be melted by means of it.

“From the greater strength and vivacity of the flame of a candle, in this pure air, it may be conjectured that it might be peculiarly salutary to the lungs in certain morbid cases.... But perhaps we may also infer from these experiments that though pure dephlogisticated air might be very useful as a medicine, it might not be so proper for us in the usual healthy state of the body: for, as a candle burns out much faster in dephlogisticated than in common air, so we might, as may be said, live out too fast, and the animal powers be too soon exhausted in this pure kind of air. A moralist, at least, may say that the air which Nature has provided for us is as good as we deserve.... Who can tell but that, in time, this pure air may become a fashionable article in luxury. Hitherto only two mice and myself have had the privilege of breathing it.”

An experiment which Priestley says “I had the pleasure to see at Paris, in the laboratory of Mr Lavoisier, my excellent fellow-labourer in these inquiries, and to whom, in a variety of respects, the philosophical part of the world has very great obligations,” led him into a train of inquiry upon the action of nitric acid upon a wide range of organic substances, from which however no general results followed, in spite of much experimenting. He had at one time the idea that a fundamental difference existed in the behaviour of animal and vegetable matter with respect to nitric acid, but the observations were contradictory, and although it is readily possible to interpret the phenomena in the light of our present knowledge, they led Priestley to no definite conclusions.

Of more importance is the work on the “Fluor Acid Air”—a substance discovered by “Mr Scheele, a Swede; from which circumstance the acid is often distinguished by the name of the Swedish acid.” Priestley sought to make the air by heating Derbyshire spar (fluor spar) with oil of vitriol in glass vessels,

“as in the process of making spirit of nitre from saltpetre; and the most remarkable facts that have been observed concerning it are, that the vessels in which the distillation is made are apt to be corroded; so that holes will be made quite through them; and that when there is water in the recipient, the surface of it will be covered with a crust of a friable stony matter.”

What Priestley actually produced by this method of experimenting was more or less pure silicon fluoride, which he proceeded to collect, in his usual fashion, over quicksilver.

“I had no sooner produced this new kind of air but I was eager to see the effect it would have on water, and to produce the stony crust formed by their union, as described by Mr Scheele; and I was not disappointed in my expectations. The moment the water came into contact with this air the surface of it became white and opaque by a stony film.... Few philosophical experiments exhibit a more pleasing appearance than this, which can only be made by first producing the air confined by quicksilver, and then admitting a large body of water to it. Most persons to whom I have shown the experiment have been exceedingly struck with it.... The union of this acid air and water may also be exhibited in another manner, which to some persons makes a still more striking experiment, viz., by admitting the air, as fast as it is generated, to a large body of water resting on quicksilver.... It is, then, very pleasing to observe that the moment any bubble of air, after passing through the quicksilver, reaches the water, it is instantly, as it were, converted into a stone; but continuing hollow for a short space of time, generally rises to the top of the water.... I have met with few persons who are soon weary of looking at it; and some could sit by it almost a whole hour, and be agreeably amused all the time.”

Priestley’s attempts to explain the real nature of the fluor acid air were, as may be expected, not very happy.

“These appearances I explain by supposing that the vitriolic acid, in uniting with the spar, is in part volatilised by means of some phlogiston contained in it, so as to form a vitriolic acid air; and there is also combined with this air a portion of the solid earthy part of the spar, which continues in a state of solution till, coming into contact with the water, the fluid unites with the acid, and the earth is precipitated.”

The third volume of the work was published in the early part of 1777, with a dedication to Lord Stanhope. It opens, as usual, with the characteristically discursive preface, extending to thirty pages, in which the author apologises for the character of much in the volume. He is constrained to admit that numerous as his facts are, “few of them will appear so brilliant in the eye of the general scholar” as in either of the two former volumes, although he trusts they will “be thought no less valuable by philosophers and chemists.” Priestley, it would seem, was conscious that he was beginning, as the phrase goes, “to write himself out.”

“Lest my readers should be alarmed at this addition of one volume after another on the same subject, I do assure them that I shall now certainly give them and myself some respite, and deliver the torch to anyone who may be disposed to carry it, foreseeing that my attention will be sufficiently engaged by speculations of a very different nature.... It will be a great satisfaction to me, after the part that I have taken in this business, to be a spectator of its future progress, when I see the work in so many and so good hands, and everything in so rapid and so promising a way.

“On taking leave of this subject I would entreat the candour and indulgence of my readers for any oversights they may discover in me as a philosopher, or imperfections as a writer. I am far from pretending to infallibility; but I have the satisfaction to reflect that, imperfect as my works may be found to be, they are each as perfect as I was able to make them....

“Upon this, as upon other occasions, I can only repeat that it is not my opinions on which I would be understood to lay any stress. Let the new facts, from which I deduce them, be considered as my discoveries, and let other persons draw better inferences from them if they can. This is a new and a wide field of experiment and speculation, and a premature attachment to hypothesis is the greatest obstruction we are likely to meet with in our progress through it; and as I think I have been pretty much upon my guard myself, I would caution others to be upon their guard too.”

These passages evidently were written under the influence of the feeling of resentment with which he viewed the criticism to which his speculations were subjected abroad. Fontana, Lavoisier and others were, indeed, zealously engaged in using Priestley’s own facts to destroy the conception by which he explained them. An appeal to the balance was felt to be necessary, and Priestley, as a logician, could not resist it. But he was no quantitative chemist: the habits of a Cavendish were quite foreign to his genius: patient, scrupulous attention to numerical accuracy was not one of his characteristics: he was one of the most industrious of experimenters—delighting, indeed, in manipulation for the mere sake of it, but withal hasty and superficial. It is nowhere evident in his writings that his problems were attacked according to any carefully-thought-out plan. He confesses indeed, on more than one occasion, he tested the inflammability of one of his numerous “airs” because he had a lighted candle near him: had the candle not been lighted it would not have occurred to him to do it. Priestley was, in fact, a pioneer: he showed the existence of a new world for science, and he himself roamed over a portion of it, like a second Joshua; but he had not the experience or the aptitude to accurately map out even that fraction.

There is little in the third volume of permanent value. It is largely an account of a series of disconnected observations on the action of nitric acid upon a variety of substances, which, however, led to no general conclusions. It is, however, certain that if Priestley could have induced himself to follow up certain of his observations he would have arrived at facts of far greater importance than those he actually narrates. “Speculation,” he said, by way of rejoinder to Lavoisier, “is a cheap commodity. New and important facts are most wanted, and therefore of most value,” and the new and important facts were within his grasp if he had only reached out for them.

Another portion of the work is concerned with supplementary observations on the gases treated of in the preceding volumes, partly by way of correction and partly additional. Here and there we have a suggestive passage, as in the paper on “Experiments on the Mixture of Different Kinds of Air that have no Mutual Action,” in which he thus clearly indicates the principle of the intra-diffusion of gases.

“The result of my trials has been this general conclusion: that when two kinds of air have been mixed it is not possible to separate them again by any method of decanting or pouring them off, though the greatest possible care be taken in doing it. They may not properly incorporate, so as to form a third species of air, possessed of new properties; but they will remain equally diffused through the mass of each other; and whether it be the upper or the lower part of the air that is taken out of the vessel, without disturbing the rest, it will contain an equal mixture of them both.”

Another suggestive paper is on “Respiration and the Use of the Blood,” which was read to the Royal Society on January 25, 1776, and appears in the Phil. Trans., vol. lxvi. Priestley, of course, regarded respiration as a phlogistic process, and “that the use of the lungs is to carry off a putrid effluvium, or to discharge that phlogiston, which had been taken into the system with the aliment, and has become, as it were, effete, the air that is respired serving as a menstruum for that purpose.” This he thinks he has “proved to be effected by means of the blood, in consequence of its coming so nearly into contact with the air in the lungs, the blood appearing to be a fluid wonderfully formed to imbibe and part with that principle which the chemists call phlogiston, and changing its colour in consequence of being charged with it or being freed from it.” The facts in this paper are for the most part correctly stated, but the discoverer of oxygen led the world woefully astray as to the part played by that gas in the phenomena of respiration.

The fourth volume made its appearance in March 1779, with a dedication to Sir George Savile, who had rendered Priestley the service of introducing him and his invention of soda-water to the notice of the Admiralty. In the preface, which is commendably short, he makes some reference to the respite which he had promised himself and his readers, but trusts, by way of extenuation, “it may be sufficient to allege the instability of human purposes and pursuits.” He had intended to devote himself to metaphysics.

“But that kind of writing,” he says, “is a thing of a very different nature from this. I can truly say ... that single sections in this work have cost me more than whole volumes of the other; so great is the difference between writing from the head only and writing, as it may be called, from the hands.”

The fact was Priestley could not keep away from his laboratory.

“Having acquired a fondness for experiments, even slighter inducements than I have had would have been sufficient to determine my conduct.”

The preface is noteworthy for its plea for the position of experimental science in the scheme of general education.

“If we wish to lay a good foundation for a philosophical taste, and philosophical pursuits, persons should be accustomed to the sight of experiments and processes in early life. They should, more especially, be early initiated in the theory and practice of investigation, by which many of the old discoveries may be made to be really their own; on which account they will be much more valued by them. And, in a great variety of articles, very young persons may be made so far acquainted with everything necessary to be previously known as to engage (which they will do with peculiar alacrity) in pursuits truly original.”

In the course of some observations on the effect “of impregnating oil of vitriol with nitrous acid vapour” he discovered nitrosulphuric acid, the so-called “Leaden Chamber Crystals,” whose properties and behaviour with water he describes with accuracy and even eloquence. Of these crystals he says: “A more beautiful appearance can hardly be imagined, and I am afraid I shall never see the like again.” He also noticed the formation of the dark brown compound which nitric oxide forms with a solution of green vitriol, and adds:—

“To determine whether the phenomena attending the impregnation of the solution of green vitriol with nitrous air depended in any measure upon the seeming astringency of that solution ... I impregnated a quantity of green tea, which is also said to be astringent, with nitrous air, but no sensible change of colour was produced in it.”

He several times noticed the deep blue liquid which nitrogen peroxide forms with cold water. He made many attempts to use nitric oxide as an antiseptic, especially for culinary purposes. But the gastronomic results with fowls and pigeons were not to his liking, although he says, “my friend Mr Magellan ... had not so bad an opinion of this piece of cookery as I had.” One cannot read Priestley’s description of his multifarious experiments without being struck with the number of occasions in which he just missed making discoveries of first-rate importance. It is obvious that he had obtained chlorine without recognising it, even before the news of Scheele’s discovery reached this country. He had also prepared, without knowing it, phosphoretted hydrogen and phosphorous acid. At times, however, he can follow a clue with remarkable perspicacity; as in his observation of the cause of the “flouring” of mercury, and in his discovery of a method of removing lead and tin from that metal.

The subject of “dephlogisticated air” naturally continued to interest him, and he again returns to it in this volume, for he says:—

“As it sometimes amuses myself it may perhaps amuse others to look back with me to the several steps in the actual progress of this investigation, some of which I overlooked in my last account of it.”

He points out, as already stated, that he must have had the new gas in his hands as far back as November 1771, having obtained it from nitre. He admits that he had no particular view in making his crucial experiment of August 1, 1774,

“excepting that of extracting air from a variety of substances by means of a burning lens in quicksilver, which was then a new process with me, and which I was very fond of.”

He explains how he was led to his speculation that “this kind of air, and consequently of atmospherical air, which is the same thing but in a state of inferior purity,” consists “of earth and spirit of nitre.”

“But,” he adds, “I have since seen reason to suspect that hypothesis, plausible as it appears. Indeed, some of my late experiments would lead me to conclude that there is no acid at all in pure air.”

He then experiments with manganese, which Scheele, who independently discovered oxygen, had already employed, and finds that it yields the new air both when heated alone or with oil of vitriol. The production of oxygen from manganese was contrary to his expectations as the substances he had hitherto used, the precipitate per se and the red lead and the nitre, had all been subjected to “the influence of the atmosphere,” whereas “here was pure air from a substance which for anything that appeared had always been in the bowels of the earth, and never had had any communication with the external air.” This led to the surmise that possibly the expulsion of dephlogisticated air from such mineral substances

“might assist in sustaining subterraneous fires.... The solution of the phenomena of subterraneous fires would certainly be much easier on the supposition of their supplying their own pabulum, by means of dephlogisticated air contained in substances exposed to their heat. I therefore desired Mr Landriani, who being in Italy had a good opportunity of making inquiries on the subject, to inform me whether any of those substances, and particularly manganese be found in their volcanoes; and his answer makes it rather probable that those fires are, in part, sustained by this means.”

The ease with which nitre parts with its oxygen on heating furnished Priestley with the true explanation of its so-called “detonation,” “concerning which,” he says, “the most improbable conjectures have been advanced by the most eminent philosophers and chemists.” After a reference to the hypothesis of Macquer, who assumes that what he calls “a nitrous sulphur” is produced, Priestley points out that

“the doctrine of dephlogisticated air supplies the easiest solution imaginable of this very difficult phenomenon. Let any person but attend to the phenomena of the detonation of charcoal in nitre, and that of dipping a piece of hot charcoal into a jar of dephlogisticated air, and I think it will be impossible for him not to conclude that the appearances are the very same and must have the same cause.”

Of all the quantitative exercises performed by Priestley, by far the most numerous depended upon his application of nitric oxide to measure the “goodness” of air.

“When,” he says, “I first discovered the property of nitrous air as a test of the wholesomeness of common air, I flattered myself that it might be of considerable practical use, and particularly that the air of distant places and countries might be brought and examined together with great ease and satisfaction; but I own that hitherto I have rather been disappointed in my expectations from it.... I gave several of my friends the trouble to send me air from distant places, especially from manufacturing towns, and the worst they could find to be actually breathed by the manufacturers, such as is known to be exceedingly offensive to those who visit them; but when I examined those specimens of air in Wiltshire, the difference between them and the very best air in this county, which is esteemed to be very good, as also the difference between them and specimens of the best air in the counties in which these manufacturing towns are situated, was very trifling.... I have frequently taken the open air in the most exposed places in this country at different times of the year, and in different states of the weather, etc., but never found the difference so great as the inaccuracy arising from the method of making the trial might easily amount to or exceed.”

Other observers, less careful or more sanguine than Priestley, were, however, successful in detecting the differences which prejudice led them to anticipate. Thus Signor Marsilio Landriani of Milan, whose name has already been mentioned in connection with the theory of subterraneous fires, in the course of a tour through Italy had the satisfaction of convincing himself

“that the air of all those places, which from the long experience of the inhabitants has been reputed unwholesome, is found to be so to a very great degree of exactness by the eudiometer.... The air of the Pontine lakes, that of the Sciroccho at Rome (so very unwholesome), that of the Campagna Romana, of the Grotto del Cane, of the Zolfatara at Naples, of the baths of Nero at Baja, of the seacoast of Tuscany, were all examined by me and found to be in such a state as daily experience led me to expect.”

Modern eudiometry, making use of methods of far greater precision than were possible to Priestley, has confirmed his supposition that atmospheric air is remarkably constant in composition, and that its wholesomeness depends upon other causes than the relative amount of the dephlogisticated air contained in it.

Perhaps the most important of the many papers contained in this volume are those which relate to the “Melioration of Air by the Growth of Plants,” a subject to which Priestley gave attention, even whilst at Leeds, in 1771. In these papers he clearly proves that this “melioration” is connected with the green matter of leaves and that it is dependent upon sunlight. This observation is of fundamental importance and attracted much attention.

In the fifth volume, which was published in the spring of 1781, with a dedication to Dr Heberden, when Priestley had moved to Birmingham, he again returns to this subject. Practically all the experimental work to which it relates was done whilst he was with Lord Shelburne, and mainly at Calne. During the former parts of the summer of 1780 he suffered from an illness which greatly interfered with his work, although he thinks that during his incapacity for making experiments his “hints for the farther prosecution of them are greatly accumulated.” It cannot be said that the five papers on the relations of vegetation to air, with which the volume opens, added very materially to the fundamental fact which Priestley had discovered. They furnished, however, additional evidence of it and no doubt stimulated further inquiry. If his facts could not be controverted, his explanations and surmises were at least open to attack, and a number of observers, both here and abroad, busied themselves with the problems of physiological botany thereby suggested.

As regards the subject of “air” in general, although a large number of isolated observations are recorded in somewhat tedious detail, no new fact of first-rate importance is apparent. The experiments are largely supplementary to those in the preceding volumes and are for the most explanatory or corroborative of them. Perhaps the most important are those dealing with “the production of nitrous air in which a candle will burn,” by which is signified the gas we now know as nitrous oxide, but which Priestley eventually termed dephlogisticated nitrous air. The process he employed is no longer used in the production of this gas, but it sufficed in his hands to determine its individuality without doubt.