34 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION TO CHEMISTRY CHAP. 



this apparatus he showed that a decrease in the volume of 

 air occurred when a candle was burned in an inverted flask, 

 or when camphor was fired in it by means of a burning 

 glass (Fig. n): this decrease he attributed to the disap- 

 pearance of the nitre-air during burning. He also showed 

 that a decrease in the volume of air was caused by a mouse 

 breathing in it (Figs. 12 and 13), and that the mouse died 

 almost immediately if placed in a jar of air in which a 

 flame was burning : the nitre-air used in burning was 

 therefore also necessary for breathing, and was used up in 

 just the same way as by 

 a burning candle. 



Lavoisier (1774) 

 proves that the gain in 

 weight when tin is 

 calcined is due to ab- 

 sorption of air. The 

 overthrow of the phlog- 

 iston theory and the 

 establishment of the 

 theory of combustion, 

 were the work of a 

 French nobleman, An- 

 toine Laurent Lavoisier 

 (1743-1794). Lavoisier met with an untimely death dur- 

 ing the French Revolution, but himself brought about a 

 revolution in the science of chemistry, so complete as 

 almost to justify the dictum of a fellow countryman, 

 " Chemistry is a French science. Its founder was Lavoisier 

 of immortal memory." l His experiments on combustion 



1 This is the opening passage of Wurtz's Atomic Theory. A 

 contrary opinion was expressed by Brande, Professor of Chemistry in 

 the Royal Institution, who wrote in 1819 : "It is, I think, among our 

 own countrymen that we discover the fathers of chemical philosophy : 

 for Bacon, Boyle, Hooke, and Newton, present unequivocal claims to 

 that distinctive title" (Manual of Chemistry, p. xviii.). 



FIG. 15 LAVOISIER'S APPARATUS FOR CAL- 

 CINING LEAD AND TIN IN AIR OVER 

 WATER OR MERCURY. 



