Life of Count Rumford. 475 



In the scientific results which he obtained from them, 

 in the theory which he deduced, and in the large philo- 

 sophical generalizations which he announced as war- 

 ranted by them, he is fairly to be regarded as the dis- 

 coverer and first promulgator of the facts and principles 

 which are grouped under the now familiar designation 

 of the Conservation and Correlation of Forces. As La- 

 voisier with whose widow Rumford was soon to form 

 what promised to be a felicitous, though it proved to 

 be an uncongenial marriage, had illustrated a new era 

 in chemical science by establishing the truth that in the 

 processes of analysis no atom or element of matter is 

 annihilated or irrecoverably lost, so the American phi- 

 losopher illustrated the corresponding truth as to Heat 

 and Force once generated. 



Count Rumford introduces this, as he does each of 

 his Essays, with one of those general and comprehen- 

 sive observations which, as stated in his lucid and 

 forcible way, convey such obvious truths, that, as we 

 read them, we almost wonder that they need to be 

 set forth. He reminds us that the habit of keeping 

 the eyes open, and the mind attent, in the ordinary 

 affairs of life, while contemplating some curious opera- 

 tion of nature, or pursuing any mere mechanical process 

 in art or manufacture, may, as it were by accident, lead 

 to discoveries such as will not reward the intensest 

 meditations of philosophers in their hours of study. It 

 was by accident, he says, that he was led to pursue the 

 experiments the rewarding results of which he proceeds 

 to describe. He was engaged in superintending the 

 boring of cannon in the workshops of the Elector's 

 arsenal and foundry in Munich, when his attention was 

 arrested by observing the considerable degree of heat 



