TEE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE. 



93 



read to the Royal Society on May 20, 

 1790, Keir described quite fully many 

 of the phenomena due to ' altered' iron, 

 as he called it, and this property was 

 afterwards known to many chemists; 

 nevertheless, Schonbein first used the 

 term passivity, and the discovery of the 

 phenomena is commonly ascribed to 

 him. 



The ' Sketch of the Life of James 

 Keir ' is one of the rarest of the 

 biographies of chemists, having been 

 printed for private circulation, and 

 edited by his grandson, James Keir 

 Moilliet (London, 1868 J. Keir, who 

 was born in 1735, was educated as a 

 physician, but entered the army, and 

 on retiring became a successful man of 

 business, associated at one time with 

 Boulton and Watt; he was an intimate 

 friend of Erasmus Darwin and of 

 Joseph Priestley, whose phlogistic 

 views he shared in spite of the clear 

 demonstrations of Lavoisier. In a let- 

 ter to Darwin, dated 1790, Keir wrote: 

 " I neither believe in phlogiston nor in 

 oxygene, nor in any other of Lavoisier's 

 metaphysical principles. . . . What 1 

 dislike in the anti-phlogistians is their 

 pedantry and presumption; in the old 

 system there is one assumed matter, 

 whereas in Lavoisier's there are oxy- 

 gene, hydrogene, calorique and car- 

 bone, all of which are imaginary, or at 

 least hypothetical beings." Keir was 

 a member of the social club known as 

 the Lunar Society, which was founded 

 in Birmingham in 1766, and lasted 

 nearly forty years. 



All that is known of this private 

 society, its founders, its membership 

 and its meetings is found in another 

 privately printed volume, ' Scientific 

 Correspondence of Joseph Priestley,' 

 by Henry Carrington Bolton (New 

 York, 1892) ; this contains ninety- 

 seven letters of the eminent chemist 

 w r ho discovered oxygen, accompanied by 

 historical and bibliographic notes. The 

 book is illustrated by portraits of 

 Priestley and of his friend Wedgewood, 

 to whom many of the letters are 



addressed; they cover the period from 

 1780 to 1804, the last being written by 

 Thomas Cooper to Dr. Benjamin Rush 

 to announce the death of Priestley, 

 which had occurred that morning 

 (February 6). Some letters written 

 in 1783 concerning Watts' experiments 

 throw light on his share in the dis- 

 covery of the composition of water. 

 Priestley, as is well known, adhered 

 throughout his life to the theory of 

 phlogiston, and never accepted the doc- 

 trines of his contemporary Lavoisier. 

 The life of this great French chemist 

 was edited by Edouard Grimaux, in 

 a handsome, well-illustrated volume 

 (Paris, 1888). This contains besides 

 the story of his grand discoveries, 

 of his government positions and his 

 domestic concerns, many official docu- 

 ments, supplying the historical proofs; 

 the events associated with his arrest, 

 imprisonment and unhappy and tragic 

 end, are of painful interest. 



Charles William Scheele, the poor 

 apothecary of an obscure town in 

 remote Sweden, made twenty-five prime 

 discoveries, any one of which would 

 have sufficed to make him famous; his 

 ' Letters and Drawings,' edited by A. 

 E. Nordenskiold were published in a 

 handsome octavo, illustrated with 

 plates and fac-similes. The hundred 

 and thirty-three letters extend from 

 1767 to 1781, and are addressed to 

 Gahn, Bergman, Hjelm and others; the 

 editor endeavors to prove from 

 Scheele's manuscripts that he isolated 

 oxygen more than a year earlier than 

 Priestley. Books printed outside of 

 Sweden were hardly accessible to 

 Scheele. In 1777 he wrote to Gahn: 

 " Priestley's book I have not yet seen. 

 If it were in French I should like to 

 read it. Here I am in great darkness as 

 respects literature, a deprivation that 

 is very unfortunate." Those seeking 

 details of the life and labors of Scheele 

 must consult this authoritative work, 

 which appears in two editions, Swed- 

 ish and German (Stockholm, 1892). 

 Scheele wrote in both these languages 



