JOSEPH BLACK: HIS LIFE AND WORK 75 



they resolved to put their views in practice, and having 

 collected a number of snails, had them cooked, and sat 

 down to the banquet. Each began to eat very gingerly ; 

 neither liked to confess his true feelings to the other. 

 'Dr. Black at length broke the ice, but in a delicate 

 manner, as if to sound the opinion of his messmate: 

 "Doctor," he said, in his precise and quiet manner, 

 "Doctor, do you not think that they taste a little a 

 very little queer?" "Queer, queer indeed! tak them 

 awa', tak them awa' ! " vociferated Dr. Hutton, start- 

 ing up from table, and giving vent to his feelings of 

 abhorrence.' 



The portraits of the subject of this biography reveal 

 Black as possessing a calm, contemplative nature; but 

 Kay's caricatures indicate that he could take a some- 

 what humorous view of life, and perhaps might even 

 display a vein of caustic sarcasm. A portrait of him 

 while lecturing may well have been sketched, we may 

 suppose, while he was making scathing comments on 

 the objections raised by a German chemist named Meyer 

 to his doctrine of causticity, which ' that person,' as 

 Brougham tells us, ' explained by supposing an acid, called 

 by him acidum pingue, to be the cause of alkaline mild- 

 ness. The unsparing severity of the lecture in which 

 Black exposed the ignorance and dogmatism of this 

 foolish reasoner cannot well be forgotten by his hearers.' 

 It appears to me, however, that Meyer's theory cannot 

 have been correctly stated by Brougham (for it is remark- 

 ably like Black's own explanation), or must have been 

 misunderstood by Black. Another of Kay's portraits 

 exhibits Black and Hutton, under the title of 'The 

 Philosophers ' ; and here again the caricaturist has made 

 it obvious that Black could appreciate a joke. A third 

 portrait represents him taking a gentle walk ; it conveys 

 an idea of his appearance in his fifty -ninth year. 



