References
- 1959 . Ann. Sci. , 15 : 65 – 65 . 1960, 16, 1; and 1962, 18, 87.
- Robison , John , ed. 1803 . Lectures on the Elements of Chemistry … by the late Joseph Black, M.D. Vol. 2 , Edinburgh
- See McKie Kennedy Ann. Sci. 1960 16 161 170 (pubd. 1962) and Robison, op. cit., vol. i, pp. x–xii.
- This paragraph, it will be observed, does not occur in the UCL MS. So far no trace of this other explanation has been found in the Caylevy MS. See also UCL MS. iv 62 62 ‘of this class’
- This paragraph, it will be observed, does not occur in the UCL MS. So far no trace of this other explanation has been found in the Caylevy MS. See also UCL MS. i 227 247
- Henry and Brougham . 1855 . Lives of the Philosophers of the time of George III , 3rd edn. 19 – 19 . London and Glasgow
- See McKie D. Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 1949–50 7 9 13
- See McKie D. Heathcote N.H. de V. Ann. Sci. 1958 14 12 15 (publ. 1960) where the original Latin text is given with an English translation
- UCL MS. , iv 62 – 62 . ‘of this class’
- UCL MS. , iv 62 – 62 . ‘… which it has not received immediately from other Bodies’.
- UCL MS. , iv 62 – 62 . ‘… Change of the Nature and qualities of the Matter that is thus inflamed. This does not happen to the Bodies of any other Class. No other Bodies …’.
- UCL MS. , iv 62 – 62 . ‘Steam or Vapour …’.
- UCL MS. , iv 62 – 62 . ‘… some of the fixed Salts …’.
- UCL MS. , iv 63 – 63 . ‘than that thrown in’.
- UCL MS. , iv 63 – 63 . ‘… Sources of heat, sending a steam [stream] of Heat and light into the Surrounding Bodies …’.
- UCL MS. , iv 65 – 65 . ‘… some subtile fluid …’.
- UCL MS. , iv 66 – 66 . ‘… we have some remarkable and striking facts, there are not wanting …’.
- A paragraph at this point appears to have been omitted from the Cayley MS. In the UCL MS. it reads: ‘And with regard to the difficulty that occurs here, that Bodies are heavier after the separation of this principle; as we can easily show to be the Case of the Phosphorus of Urine, Sulphur and some of the Metallic substances; when treating of Inflammation, as an effect of Heat, I observed yt. it was only necessary to suppose that this matter was exempted from the Laws of Gravitation, or rather that it is specifically light, and when thrown into the composition of a Body renders it lighter than it was before; and we supposed with some of the greatest Philosophers, that this Heat and Light depended upon a dense subtile fluid, pervading all other kinds of matter, and so Elastic as to be put into motion with great facility, and that we have manifest Indications of such matter in the Phœnomena of Electricity, Magnetism & Gravitation’ UCL MS. iv 66 67 The reason for the omission of this paragraph is not obvious, but Black was here repeating what he had said in an earlier lecture, as may be seen by referring to p. 223 above. See also foot-note7.
- UCL MS. , iv 67 – 67 . ‘Phosphorii [sic], Sulphur, Charcoal, Ardent Spirits, Oils, and Bitumens …’.
- This addition facing f. 70r of the Cayley MS. does not appear in the UCL MS. and it seems out of place where it is inserted. The sketch is not satisfactory, because, since A contains the ‘inflammable body’, the point of balance, C, should be nearer to A than to B, if the ‘glasses’ were as similar as they are shown in the sketch. As there is some confusion about Beccaria's experiments, we shall defer a detailed account of them to a note at the end of this paper, merely recording here that the first description of the experiment referred to above was published in December 1774 Obs. sur la Phys. 1774 4 453 453 and that Beccaria, although he found that the total weight of the apparatus remained unchanged after the experiment, made no suggestion of absorption of or combination with air. The term ‘dephlogisticated air’ was coined by Priestley and he used it first in 1775 (Phil. Trans., 1775, 65, 387). The diminution of atmospheric air by one-third through the complete removal of its ‘dephlogisticated air’ is too high a result and was not derived from Priestley. The insertion of this additional matter suggests that the industrious copyist was bringing his text up to date, although perhaps neither very accurately nor very successfully. It also suggests, more significantly, that Black was now including in his lectures some account of the experimental basis of the new theory of combustion, and this would agree with the statement (see foot-note 57 below) that Lubbock made in 1784. The date of Cayley's acquisition of this MS. may be taken as 1786, which would agree with this suggestion. It should be added, of course, that the results quoted in the inserted passage could be explained in terms of the phlogiston theory and that we have no evidence to show that they were not so explained.
- UCL MS. , iv 67 – 67 . ‘… and for a process by wc. it is more easily prepared now than formerly.’
- UCL MS. , iv 67 – 67 . ‘… into the Receiver that give a luminous appearance, and along with these …’.
- UCL MS. , iv 68 – 68 . ‘… & drop partly into the Receiver, Water being in the Receiver for its condensation’.
- On the Godfreys, see Maddison R.E.W. Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 1954–55 11 159 188
- UCL MS. , iv 68 – 68 . ‘… the form of a transparent oil, …’.
- UCL MS. , iv 68 – 68 . ‘… upon cutting in water …’.
- UCL MS. , iv 68 – 68 . ‘… of the Air of the water …’.
- UCL MS. , iv 68 – 68 . ‘… a most violent disposition to Inflammation; …’.
- UCL MS. , iv 68 – 68 . ‘… at a considerable distance …’.
- UCL MS. , iv 69 – 69 . ‘… Baneful and dangerous …’.
- UCL MS. , iv 69 – 69 . ‘… soft and spongy paper …’.
- UCL MS. , iv 69 – 69 . ‘… which produce heat enough …’.
- UCL MS. , iv 70 – 70 . ‘… principle appears in its …’.
- UCL MS. , iv 70 – 70 . ‘… not perfectly pure, but …’.
- UCL MS. , iv 70 – 70 . ‘… if it is …’.
- This was a well-known fact and long familiar to chemists. See Partington McKie Ann. Sci. 1937 2 263 263 The Cayley MS. has 100 here in error; the UCL MS. has the correct 110.
- UCL MS. , iv 186 – 186 . ‘… escape of it …’.
- The Cayley MS. here lacks a paragraph, which in the UCL MS. reads as follows: ‘The increase of weight appears to be Analogous to the similar Phœnomenon in Inflammable Bodies where the whole of an inflammable matter is preserved, it proves heavier then the entire Body, there is more of it. This matter I considered at considerable length formerly, and supposed that the prinle. of Inflamy. is not like the grosser Bodies, subject to the Laws of Gravitation, but on the contrary that it renders such Bodies lighter, and as the whole history of the Metals shows that they contain the prinle. of Inflamy., and that it is separated from them when calcined, they must turn out heavier, tho' they are rarer Bodies than the Metals’ UCL MS. iv 186 187 The only reason that occurs to us for the omission of this paragraph is that Black was here again repeating himself. See foot-note23, p. 233 above, and foot-note7, page 223 above.
- UCL MS. , iv 188 – 188 . ‘… Copper, &c. applied …’.
- UCL MS. , iv 188 – 188 . ‘… produced by other inflamle. substances, is the same as in the Metals, and that it is the same in both these Classes of Bodies. There is one relative …’. The copyist's persistent mistake of following on from the second of two identical phrases occurring near one another, and omitting the words between, has been noted previously.
- The short title of Pott's book is Lithogeognosia Potsdam 1746 The incorrect spelling of this title is the same in both MSS.
- UCL MS. , iv 190 – 190 . ‘… manner it is …’.
- The contents of this paragraph, not without some confusions for the modern reader, may be more clearly understood if it is pointed out that ‘fixed air’ and ‘mephitic air’ are here synonymous and refer to the substance we now know as ‘carbon dioxide’; that ‘vital air’ and ‘common air’ are likewise here synonymous; and that ‘fixed’ or ‘mephitic air’ is here inferred to be a compound of ‘vital’ or ‘common air’ with the ‘principle of inflammability’ or ‘phlogiston’. Daniel Rutherford had earlier Dissertatio inauguralis de œre fixo dicto, aut mephitico Edin. 1772 differentiated between ‘noxious air’ (our ‘nitrogen’) and ‘fixed or mephitic air’ in a research that was effectively the isolation and recognition of nitrogen (see D. McKie, ‘Daniel Rutherford and the Discovery of Nitrogen’, Sci. Prog., 1935, 29, 650–660). Priestley with less precise experiments made in 1772 had drawn similar conclusions and had in 1774 named this new air ‘phlogisticated air’ (Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air, [vol. i], London, 1774, p. 178n). Both Rutherford and Priestley supposed this substance to be a compound of common air and phlogiston. Rutherford was more precise in his conclusions; he considered that ‘mephitic air’, that is, ‘fixed air’, was not produced by a change of common air brought about by the action of fire, but that it was rather produced by or ejected from the substance that was resolved by the fire; and he concluded that ‘noxious air’ was ‘compounded of atmospheric air united and, as it were, saturated with phlogiston’, while ‘mephitic’ or ‘fixed air’ was ‘composed of phlogistic matter and atmospheric air; for it is never produced except from bodies that abound in material apt for combustion … From phlogistic matter I say, because, as noted above, pure phlogiston combined with common air seems to constitute another kind of air’, namely, the kind that he had named ‘noxious air’ (nitrogen).
- UCL MS. , iv 191 – 191 . ‘… noxious quality …’.
- UCL MS. , iv 192 – 192 . ‘… throughout ye whole, the Crucible is covered with another vessel …’.
- UCL MS. , iv 192 – 192 . ‘… has been founded …’.
- UCL MS. , iv 194 – 194 . omits ‘called a regulus’.
- UCL MS. , iv 194 – 194 . ‘… a small proportion …’.
- Cf. Macquer's anonymously published first edition of his Dictionnaire de Chymie Pari[s] 1766 i 31 32 ‘Stahl, Cramer, & tous les bons Chymistes, regardent, avec raison, l'acier comme un fer perfectionné, qui est empreint d'une plus grande quantité du principe inflammable, si nécessaire à tous les métaux …’.
- 1784 . Dissertatio physico-chemica, inauguralis, de principio sorbili … 12n – 12n . Edin. ‘Hanc doctrinam obiter et sine confidentia in praelectionibus suis per plures annos memoravit, in ultimis vero deseruit Cel. Professor’. See also Partington and McKie, Ann. Sci., 1937, 2, 382. The passages quoted above from Black's lectures would scarcely warrant the statement that Black presented the phlogiston theory incidentally and without any confidence in it, unless, as is very probable, Lubbock was referring to Black's general attitude and dislike of all theory in chemistry as that science then was.
- See McKie Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 1949–50 7 11 11 for a statement by Black on this detail made in a letter to Lavoisier on 24 October 1790.
- See Priestley's Experiments and observations on different kinds of air London 1777 iii 234 241 and Introduction, p. 3, with Fig. 4 on Plate facing title-page.
- See Priestley's Experiments and observations on different kinds of air London 1777 iii 22 22
- Boyle's work was described in his Essays of Effluviums London 1673
- 1772 . Phil. Trans. , 62 : 228 – 232 .
- 1935 . Antoine Lavoisier, the Father of Modern Chemistry 194 – 194 . London and New York
- 1962 . A History of Chemistry Vol. iii , 400 – 401 . London The quotation (p. 400), ‘Je ne connais pas que …’, should read, as above, ‘Je ne connoissois alors que …’.
- 1774 . Mém. Acad. R. Sci. , : 366 – 367 . (published 1778)
- 1862 . Œuvres Vol. ii , 120 – 121 . Paris
- Correspondance , 461 – 462 . Here also (pp. 465–466) Lavoisier's letter to Rozier of 12 December 1774, the note that accompanied it and the extract from Cigna's memoir relating to Beccaria's experiments are reprinted with many typographical differences.
- See p. 234 above and Obs. sur la Phys. 1774 4 453 453
- 1774 . Obs. sur la Phys. , ii : 210 – 211 .
- Meldrum , A.N. 1930 . The Eighteenth Century Revolution in Science—The First Phase 4 – 4 . Calcutta
- Partington Ann. Sci. 1937 iii 401 401 note 4) states that Cigna's memoir was published in the Introduction aux Observations next to one of Lavoisier's papers; but Meldrum was correct in stating that it was next but one, and that this paper reported the experiments on the diamond made by Macquer, Cadet and Lavoisier. Partington may have been misled by referring to the index (Introduction, etc., vol. ii, p. 642), where another paper by Lavoisier, on the conversion of water into ice, follows the entry for Cigna's paper, in which entry Cigna's name is spelt as Cygna, to which Partington drew attention in the note referred to above. Cigna's name is misspelt throughout the index, but it is given correctly at the head of four of the five papers by him in this volume of the Introduction.
- 1772 . Phil. Trans. , 62 : 228 – 228 .
- 1772 . Phil. Trans. , 62 : 225 – 225 .