166 On the Difcovety ofSeignette's Salt. 



journal. We fhall therefore only oblerve that, about the 

 end of July, this year, Efchen undertook, in company with 

 M. Theodore Ziemffen his friend and countryman, a tour 

 to the borders of the lake of Geneva and the valley of Cha- 

 niouni. They afcended together the Buet, a high mountain 

 behind the village of Servoz, celebrated by the experiments 

 made there by De Luc and Saufiure, and which commands a 

 view of the country round Mount-Blanc. They were juft on 

 the point of reaching the fummit, and nothing leemed to 

 announce that any danger was to be apprehended ; Efchen 

 was walking forwards in high fpirits before his friend and 

 their guide, when, all of a hidden, his two companions lolt 

 figttt of him. A thin crufl of fnow, which covered a deep 

 fiiUire, had given way under his feet, and he fell into the 

 abyfs ; where he peri died as already related. 



XIII. On the Difcovety of that Salt known under the Name 

 of Seignette's Salt ( Tarlrite of Soda) . By Profcjfor B a C K - 



M A NX. 



T, 



HIS neutral fait, which confifts of the mineral alkali 

 (foda) and the acid of winc-ftone (lartareous acid), was pre- 

 pared and made known by a Frenchman named Peter Seig- 

 r towards the end of the kill century. The' confidence 

 with which the inventor recommended it, and the care he 

 took to conceal the method of making it, had, as is ufual, 

 fueti an effect, that it was employed in preference to many 

 medicines, long known, which had been equally ler- 

 : and by thefe means he was enabled, without much 

 trouble, to acquire a fortune. It mufl, however, be allowed 

 that he was a tkilful chemift, who, by his writings and the 

 invention of various other medicines, had obtained confider- 

 able reputation as a phyftcian and naturalift. He was efta- 

 bnftied as an apothecary at Rochelle; published papers on 

 various natural objects which he had obferved in his neigh- 

 bourhood, in the Memoirs of the Academy of Sciences at 

 Paris, as well as in other works, and died on the nth of 



March 



