(507) 



NOTE TO THE LIVES 



OF 



CAVENDISH, WATT, AND BLACK, 



Published in the First Volume. 



I HAD not read M. Cuvier's c Eloge de M. Cavendish 5 when 

 the former volume of these Lives was published. That Eloge 

 is contained in the Memoirs of the Institute for 1811*. 

 Its composition certainly justifies the title of Eloge; for it is 

 a very indiscriminate,, and not very accurate panegyric of 

 an illustrious man, whose memory was best preserved and 

 honoured by a correct statement of the facts. M. Cuvier 

 makes no mention whatever of Watt in connection with the 

 discovery of the composition of water. But he is not much 

 more just to Black himself on that of fixed air; or, as he calls 

 him, Blake : clearly showing that he had never taken the 

 trouble even to look at any work of that great man. As to 

 Mr. Cavendish, he gives it for part of his Eulogy that he 

 explained his doctrines " dans une maniere plus etonnante 

 encore que leur decouverte meme," (p. cxxvi.) Now if M. 

 Cuvier had read the paper upon the combustion of inflam- 

 mable air, he certainly would have found that this remark in 

 no respect whatever applies to it, for the composition of water 

 is but darkly shadowed out in that celebrated Memoir. 



He proceeds to say, that in 1766 Mr. Cavendish under- 

 took, in his paper read before the Royal Society, to establish 



* Nothing can be more confused, more inconsistent, than the manner of 

 publishing the volumes of this great work. It is generally a year or two 

 and even three or four, after the real date of the papers ; thus this twelfth 

 volume of the new series is called ' Mem. annee 1811,' yet it contains only 

 two papers of 1810-11; all the rest were received in 1812-13. I have 

 remarked this more fully in the Lives of Lavoisier and D'Alembert. 



