1893. ] NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 135 
his contemporaries. In his old age a benevolent person took 
him to America where he died unhonored and unsung. 
In 1757 Professor Joseph Black, of Scotland, determined the 
true characteristics of “fixed air,’’ but seems to have made no 
important addition to the apparatus for studying gases. 
In 1767 Mr. Peter Woulfe published a paper in the Philos. 
Trans. describing an improved apparatus for condensing vapors 
without loss and applied it to hydrochloric acid, ammonia, 
nitric acid, and other substances obtained by distillation. The 
apparatus still bears his name. 
The prodigious advance made by Dr. Joseph Priestley in the 
manipulation of gases won for him the appellation: “ Father 
of Pneumatic Chemistry.” His prime invention was the inser- 
tion of a shelf into the vessel containing water, and the perfora- 
tion of this shelf so as to admit of the gases ascending into 
receivers standing thereupon, This pneumatic trough is not 
mentioned by Priestley in his first chemical paper, published in 
1772, entitled “ Directions for Impregnating Water with Fixed 
Air,’”’ In this tract the accompanying figures illustrate his 
method of collecting the gases. A bottle for generating the 
carbonic acid, to the mouth of which is attached a bladder, and 
this in turn communicates with an inverted jar by a flexible 
‘‘leather pipe sewn with waxed thread’’ and having quills 
thrust in both ends to keep them open. This simple 
apparatus was the forerunner of the modern soda-water 
machines. 
In the first edition of Vol. I. of Priestley’s “ Experiments 
and Observations on Different Kind of Air,’’ published 
two years later than the little treatise above noticed, the 
author modestly says ‘my apparatus for experiments on air 
is in fact nothing more than the apparatus of Dr. Hales, Dr. 
Brownrigg, and Mr. Cavendish, diversified and made a little 
more simple.’’ He then describes the pneumatic trough, both 
for water and for quicksilver, the method of pouring air upward 
under water, the process of generating gases by heating 
substances in a gunbarrel, by aid of a burning glass in thin 
phials filled with quicksilver, and the way to pass an electric 
spark through gases in a jar over water or over quicksilver. 
This introductory chapter clearly shows the greatest progress 
in the manipulation of gases, and the way in which Priestley 
energetically applied his skill by the discovery of nine gases is 
well known to every student. 
After the disastrous riots in Birmingham, July, 1791, in which 
Priestley’s house and laboratory were wholly destroyed by an 
angry mob, an inventory was taken of Priestley’s laboratory as 
