LAVOISIER. 247 



respecting his extraordinary services to science. He 

 even frankly and honestly, in the prefaces to his Essays, 

 disclaims much merit that all men would allow him ; and 

 fairly tells how many of the great things which he had 

 done were the suggestions of hazard, and not found out 

 by any preconceived plan for making the discovery. No 

 one, therefore, can possibly be cited whose authority is 

 more unimpeachable in weighing the facts of such a case. 

 The following are his own words in a work published by 

 him, in 1800, upon phlogiston. "The case was this. 

 Having made the discovery (of oxygen) some time 

 before I was in Paris, in the year 1774, I mentioned it 

 at the table of M. Lavoisier, when most of the philoso- 

 phical people of the city were present, saying, that it 

 was a kind of air in which a candle burnt much better 

 than in common air, but I had not then given it any 

 name. At this all the company, and Mr. and Mrs. 

 Lavoisier as much as any, expressed great surprise. I 

 told them I had gotten it from precipitate per se, and 

 also from red lead. Speaking French very imperfectly, 

 and being little acquainted with the terms of chemistry, 

 I said plombe rouge, which was not understood till 

 Mr. Macquer said I must mean minium. M. Scheele's 

 discovery was certainly independent of mine, though, I 

 believe, not made quite so early." 



It is very important here to remark that M. Lavoisier's 

 surprise was expressed at finding that minium had 

 yielded this new air by reduction. He himself had 

 made the experiment with minium, as we have seen, 

 and only could detect fixed air as the produce ; whence 

 his erroneous inference that a metallic calx is com- 

 posed of the metal united with fixed air. It was 

 not till six months after this discovery of Dr. Priestley, 



