244 LAVOISIER. 



ments. He only calls it " the most respirable portion of 

 the atmosphere." A most important admission is, how- 

 ever, made in a subsequent paper, 1782, that the experi- 

 ments in which he made this step, were not those per- 

 formed in 1774, but those performed in February, 1775, 

 (Vol. for 1782, p. 458). In 1776 he printed a Memoir 

 on Nitrous Acid, in which ample justice is done to Dr. 

 Priestley's discoveries, and the experiments recounted as 

 made by M. Lavoisier, are admitted to have all been Dr. 

 Priestley's suggestions ; he himself only claiming to have 

 drawn more correct inferences from them. Among these 

 inferences, there is only the one that nitrous acid consists 

 of oxygen and nitrous gas ; but no suspicion of its real 

 composition, afterwards discovered by Mr. Cavendish to 

 be the union of azote and oxygen, is even hinted at. It 

 is also material to note, that in this paper not a word is 

 said of the claim to having discovered oxygen. In 1 777 a 

 paper was printed by him on the combustion of phosphorus 

 with " air eminemment respirable/' to form phosphoric 

 acid; that air is said to be "by Dr. Priestley termed 

 dephlogisticated air," and still nothing is said of the 

 claim to its joint discovery; but in p. 187 he speaks of 

 the " experiences de Dr. Priestley et les miennes," on pre- 

 cipitate per se. These experiments, we are told by him, 

 in the volume for 1 775, (p. 520,) were made in November, 

 1774. In 1778, he printed, it is said, his Memoir on 

 Acids. The date of presentation is given as September, 



1 778, but the reading is said to have been 23 November, 



1779. In this paper, (p. 536,) he speaks of "the pure 

 air to which Priestley gave the name of dephlogisticated, 

 but which he himself calls oxygen, as being the acidifying 

 principle." No mention is made of the base of nitrous 



