36 BIOGRAPHIES OF SCIENTIFIC MEN 



leg of mutton." " But," said the servant, " that will not 

 be enough for five." " Then get two legs," was his reply. 



Another story is told that Cavendish's banking account 

 had accumulated to the extent of 80,000, and when his 

 banker asked whether it should be invested, he replied, 

 "Do what you like with it, but trouble me no more about 

 it, or I will place my account elsewhere." 



Although a marvellously accurate worker, Cavendish 

 was not free from bias. Like Priestley, he was a phlo- 

 gistian, and his chemical papers are written in the jargon 

 of the school of Stahl. In 1766 he published his first 

 paper, which was entitled " On Factitious Airs"; but before 

 this time he wrote two papers : " Experiments on Arsenic " 

 and " Experiments on Heat," which, however, due to his 

 horror of publicity, were not published until after his 

 death. In 1788 Cavendish published his famous paper, 

 "Experiments on Air," in which he says : " As far as the 

 experiments hitherto published extend, we scarcely know 

 more of the nature of the phlogisticated part (nitrogen) 

 of our atmosphere, than that it is not diminished by lime- 

 water, caustic alkalis, or nitrous air ; that it is unfit to 

 support fire, or maintain life in animals ; and that its 

 specific gravity is not much less than that of common air ; 

 so that though the nitrous acid by being united to phlogiston 

 is converted into air possessed of these properties, and, 

 consequently, though it was reasonable to suppose that 

 part at least of the phlogisticated air of the atmosphere 



