432 JAMES WATT. 



that facts so well authenticated should have become the 

 subject of such an earnest polemical dispute, if I did not 

 hasten to lay before you a circumstance that I have not 

 mentioned before. Lavoisier declared, in positive terms, 

 that Blagden, Secretary of the Royal Society of London, 

 was present at his first experiments on the 24th of June, 

 1783, and that "he informed him that Cavendish, having 

 already tried in London to burn hydrogen gas in closed 

 vessels, had obtained a very sensible quantity of water." 



Cavendish also repeated in his memoir, the communi- 

 cation made by Blagden to Lavoisier. According to him, 

 it was more detailed than the French chemist had ac- 

 knowledged. He said, that the information included the 

 conclusion to which the experiments led, that is to say, 

 the theory of water being a compound. 



Blagden, being called to account, wrote in the Journal 

 of Creil, in 1786, to confirm the assertion made by Cav- 

 endish. 



If we believe this, the experiments of the Academician 

 of Paris would not have been more than a simple verifi- 

 cation of those made by the English chemist. He assures 

 us that he announced to Lavoisier, that the water obtained 

 in London was precisely equal in weight to the sum of 

 the weight of the two gases that had been burned. And 

 Blagden finally adds : " Lavoisier told the truth, but not 

 all the truth." 



Such a reproach is severe ; but if it were well founded, 

 should I not diminish its weight very much, if I were to 

 show that excepting Watt, all those whose names figure 

 in this story more or less exposed themselves ? 



Priestley details some experiments as if they were his 

 own, and it results from them that the water engendered 

 by the detonation of a mixture of oxygen and hydrogen, 



