318 Mr. Genet’s Reply to Dr. Jones. 
e departure of caloric, the denomination of atmospheric 
Auid, applied by me to the pretended vacuum, was not im- 
roper, any more than the two temperatures, Which are the 
cause of the alternate motion of the piston, since the one is 
expansive and hot, and the other contractive and cold. 
The denomination of gaseous fluids, which I have given 
to steam, and not to the vacuum, as the Doctor very unfaith- 
fully quotes it, was also, I believe, Sir, correct in chemistry- 
That vapour was called, by the French chemists, before =a 
adoption of the new nomenclature, vesicular gas, and 
Thomson, in his Modern Chemistry, in the classification of 
those elastic aerial fluids, to which the general denomination 
of gas, from the German, geist, (spirit,) has been given, as- 
signs to steam the 12th rank among the compounds. But it 
is clear, that atmospheric air itself is a gas, and certainly 
the most compound and mysterious of all, since microscopic 
observations show that it contains the principles of animalisa- 
vegetation, and reg = proved that 
est substances and minerals may be rned to its empire, 
that meteoric stones are formed within its strata, and that 
through the medium of that chaotic spirit, were derived the 
oxygenous supporters of combustion and life, together with 
the azotic, the calorific, electric, magnetic, and phosphoric 
fluids, — &e. all, it seems, flowing from the great source of 
circu > the sun. 
But Fe soaua be improper, in a vindication, to defend a 
: that the adverse party has not attacked. Dr. Jones 
garbles, when he says that 1 call vacuum a gas, and the va- 
r of water atmospheric; but he has not even suspected 
that I considered atmospheric air as a co gas.— 
Returning then to his remarks, I find, that siter having made 
all-his efforts to prove “that I may either not understand, or 
out having become familiar with its disposition,” he changes 
his point of attack, and undertakes to show that ‘in my own 
child, the hydronaut, he might have expected to find me per- 
feetly familiar with both; and that, however, he is a little in- 
clined to suspect, that in ‘this latter case | know more of the 
ton than of the motion.” a 
ding this intimidating introduction to another cri- 
terrific exclamation which precedes it, “ To 
the hydronaut,” or down with tt, my first impressions, sity 
