382 WATT. 



capital point. No one refuses to Newton the discovery 

 of gravitation as the controlling and directing power of 

 the solar system ; and yet he made not one of those 

 observations upon which his theory rests ; nay, he 

 threw it aside for sixteen years when the erroneous 

 notion of a degree being only sixty miles appeared by 

 its consequences to disprove his proposition, and instead 

 of making any further experiments himself, waited 

 until Picard's more accurate measurement became 

 known to him accidentally in 1682, and enabled him 

 to demonstrate his doctrine. In like manner, Lavoi- 

 sier, who discovered no gas, and made no original 

 experiments of the least value in pneumatic chemistry, 

 is universally admitted to have discovered the true 

 theory of combustion and calcination, by reasoning 

 on the facts which others had ascertained. Watt's 

 happy inference from the facts discovered by Warltire 

 and Priestley was just as much entitled, and for the 

 same reasons, to be regarded as the discovery of the 

 composition of water. 



The latter years of Mr. Watt's useful and honour- 

 able life were passed in the bosom of his family and 

 the society of his friends, although he ever gave the 

 due attention to the extensive concerns of the house in 

 which he was the principal partner. He had been 

 married as early as 1764 to Miss Miller, his cousin, 

 and had by her a daughter who predeceased him, leaving 

 children, and a son, James, who still survives, inherit- 

 ing the scientific tastes, the extensive knowledge, the 

 masculine understanding, and the scrupulous integrity 

 of his father. With the late Mr. Robinson Boulton 

 and Mr. Gregory Watt, he was admitted into the part- 



