246 LAVOISIER. 



this period that he refers his supposed discovery, and 

 not to any part, however late, of 1774. It must also be 

 borne in mind, that, for the reason formerly stated 

 respecting the irregular publication of the Memoirs, and 

 the inserting in one year the papers read long after, 

 in many cases, without noting the date of their presen- 

 tation, it becomes impossible to be certain of the time at 

 which many of them were actually read. But I have 

 always assumed that M. Lavoisier's were read at the 

 times stated by him; and where no date is given I 

 have supposed the paper to have been read in the 

 year to which the volume refers a supposition mani- 

 festly favourable, and often gratuitously favourable, to 

 his case. 



We have thus seen the suspicious manner in which, 

 after suffering to pass over at least eight occasions on 

 which he might naturally have brought forward the claim, 

 he at length makes it at an interval of ten years; but 

 he makes it with an important admission, that Priestley's 

 discovery had been before his own. Yet strange to tell, 

 when he repeats the assertion of "presqu'en meme 

 terns," in his ' Siemens de Chimie,' he entirely omits this 

 statement of "et meme je crois avant rnoi." Let us 

 now observe what Dr. Priestley himself states, first re- 

 marking that he comes before us without the least 

 unfavourable impression attached to his testimony, while 

 M. Lavoisier's is subject to the weight of the observation 

 already made, and arising entirely from his own conduct. 

 Dr. Priestley, moreover, was a person of the most scrupu- 

 lous veracity, and wholly incapable of giving any false 

 colouring to the facts which he related respecting his 

 discoveries. Indued, no man ever shewed less vanity 



