WATT. 381 



to any one else.* It is to be noted, too, that in 1784 

 Mr. Cavendish, after his celebrated experiment, had 

 not attained by any means so clear a notion of the 

 true doctrine as Mr. Watt explains in those previous 

 letters, f I examined minutely the whole of this 

 subject eight years ago, at the request of my dis- 

 tinguished colleague M. Arago, then engaged in 

 preparing his < Eloge' of Mr. Watt, who had also been 

 our fellow-member of the Institute. The reader will 

 find my statement of the evidence annexed to this 

 account. But I cannot easily suppose that M. Arago 

 ever intended, and I know that I never myself intended, 

 to insinuate in the slightest degree a suspicion of Mr. 

 Cavendish's having borrowed from Mr. Watt. He had, 

 in all probability, been led to the same conclusion by his 

 own researches, ignorant of Mr. Watt's speculations, 

 a little earlier in point of time, just as Priestley when 

 claiming, and justly claiming, the important discovery 

 of oxygen (called by him, in accordance with the 

 doctrine of Stahl, " dephlogisticated air"), never denied 

 that Scheele also made the same discovery, calling it 

 " empyreal air," without being aware of another having 

 preceded him. Priestley, of course, treated the dis- 

 creditable proceedings of Lavoisier in respect to this 

 gas very differently, and so must all impartial men. 



It must on no account be supposed that Watt cannot 

 be considered as having discovered the composition of 

 water, merely because he made no new experiments of 

 particular moment, like Cavendish, to ascertain that 



* Letters to Gilbert Hamilton of Glasgow, Fry of Bristol, 

 Smeaton, De Luc all dated March and April, 1783. 



f See Life of Cavendish for further particulars and explanations. 



