LAVOISIER. 235 



science. In their company, and with the inestimable 

 advantage of their constant society, in which every point 

 was discussed and all difficulties encountered by their 

 lights as well as his own, he devoted the rest of his 

 praiseworthy life to his favourite science, repeating the 

 experiments of others, varying them with the suggestions 

 of his own mind, and, in some instances, devising new 

 ones which he successfully conducted. We are now to 

 consider the fruits of these glorious labors. 



In 1768 and 1769 he made a number of very 

 laborious and very accurate experiments, with the view 

 of ascertaining the correctness of an opinion long enter- 

 tained, and among others by Bonde and Margraaff, that 

 water may, by repeated distillations, be converted into 

 earth; and also of determining whether or not there was 

 any foundation for the opinion that water can, by 

 repeated distillations, become so elastic and aeriform as 

 to escape through the pores of vessels : an opinion enter- 

 tained by Stahl, the celebrated author of the phlogistic 

 theory. M. Lavoisier satisfactorily disproved both these 

 positions, and shewed that the earth which had misled 

 others was a portion of the vessels : used in performing 

 the distillation. The account of these experiments was 

 given to the Academy in 1770, and published in 1773. 

 It may give us some idea of the pains with which these 

 experiments were performed, to state that one of them 

 lasted a hundred and one days. 



In the year after these inquiries were carried on, 

 his attention appears to have been turned aside from 

 chemical studies, by the reports which he made to the 

 Academy upon the means of supplying Paris with water, 

 at an economical rate. A question having arisen between 



