486 Life of Count Rumford. 



in his History of the Inductive Sciences, treats the subject of 

 thermotics without mentioning him. An eminent Edinburgh 

 professor, writing recently in the Philosophical Magazine, under 

 the confessed influence of c patriotism ' undertakes to make the 

 dynamical theory of heat an English monopoly, due to Sir 

 Isaac Newton, Sir Humphry Davy, and Dr. J. P. Joule ; 

 while an able writer in a late number of the North British 

 Review, in sketching the historic progress of the new views, 

 puts Davy forward as their founder, and assigns to Rumford a 

 minor and subsequent place." 



How unwarranted is the claim for priority thus ad- 

 vanced for Davy will be evident from the simple state- 

 ment of the facts in the case. In 1799, the year after 

 Rumford's full publication of his experiments with 

 their results, Davy, at the age of twenty-one, published 

 a tract at Bristol relating some of his own experiments, 

 and proving that he rejected the common theory of 

 caloric or latent heat. The notice of Rumford was 

 drawn to Davy through this tract, in which he recog- 

 nized a partial accordance with his own views, and an 

 interesting and promising, though as yet but very im- 

 perfect perception, recognition, and treatment of the 

 elements of the great subject of investigation. Rum- 

 ford was induced, mainly by his appreciation of the 

 ability manifested by Davy in dealing with that subject 

 which had so long and so successfully engaged his own 

 laborious and ingenious efforts, to entertain favorably 

 the suggestion of giving the writer of the tract a situa- 

 tion in the Royal Institution, as already related. Davy, 

 however, does not appear to have directed his inquiries 

 upon the quantitative relation between mechanical force 

 and heat. It was as long after as the year 1812 that, in 

 his Chemical Philosophy, he for the first time clearly 

 stated the conclusion that " the immediate cause of 



