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"ivhirli will' ilioiiglit to hiivt' l)ien foriiu'd by the srction ot' lieat upon tlie water. 

 To tost tlie matter Lavoisier placed some water in a sealed vessel so arranged that 

 ihe water could be boiled in the lower part, while the steam would condense above 

 and run back. He kept three i)ounds of water boiling in this way for ni<)re than 

 tlircf months. A\ the end of the time he evai)orated tlie wati-r and obtained from 

 it 20.4 grains of eartiiy matter, wliile the vessel used had lost 17.4 grains in 

 weigiit. The difierence he considered as due to unavoidai)le errors of experiment, 

 and from tlie imperfect data lie drew tlie oorret't conclusion that water can not l)e 

 ■changed into earth. Such results as these must have given to Lavoisier the feeling 

 that he could not trust the observations of otiier chemists, but must test every 

 experimental fact for himself. This attitude, which was. undoubtedly, not 

 without sotue reason, is closely connected with one of the worst sides of his char- 

 acter — a tendency to belittle the work of others, and even to appropriate as his 

 own discoveries made by others. We find that Lavoisier repeatedly described 

 iliscoveries which had been made by some one else in such a manner as to give the 

 impression that the discovery h:id been made by himself. It is true that in some 

 cases the discovery acquired in his hands an entirely different meaning. This is 

 especially true of the discoveries of oxygen and of the composition of water. 

 Lavoisier was, undoubtedly, the first to see the true significance and importance 

 ■of these discoveries, and the very great value of the discoveries to the scientific 

 ivorld depends far more on the labors of Lavoisier than on those of Priestley and 

 Cavendish. Yet this can not lead us to condone the desire which was shown of 

 appropriating for himself the honor which belonged toothers. Lideed, we can 

 not but feel that such conduct is more than usually reprehensible in one whose 

 ■own work was really so very great and who, of all men, had so little need to seek 

 for honor that was not entirely his own. There was certainly something lacking 

 in the moral fiber of the man which detracts very much from our opinion of his 

 personal character however much we admire his scientific achievements. 



Lavoisier's study of the conversion of water into earth was of especial interest 

 because of the way in which he attacked the problem. Previous to his time very 

 few chemists paid any attention to quantitative relations in chemical phenomena, 

 and his use of the balances in studying the question proved in his hands the be- 

 ginning of a new era. Too much has often been made, however, of this distinc- 

 tion between the chemistry of the era of phlogiston and that which immediatelv 

 followed the downfall of that theory. Cavendish spent a great deal of time on 

 quantitative experiments, and many of his results exceeded in accuracy those of 

 Lavoisier, yet all of his work was conceived and his results were interpreted in 

 terms of the theory of phlogiston. Methods of ()uautitative analysis similar to 



