150 HISTORY OF CHEMISTRY. 



alone defended the phlogistic theory with vigour, 

 and indeed with violence. He was the editor of the 

 Journal de Physique, and to evade the influence 

 which this gave him, the antiphlogistians 8 esta- 

 blished, as the vehicle of their opinions, another 

 periodical, the Annales de Chimie. 



In England, indeed, their success was not so 

 immediate. Cavendish 9 , in his Memoir of 1784, 

 speaks of the question between the two opinions 

 as doubtful. "There are," he says, "several Me- 

 moirs of M. Lavoisier, in which he entirely discards 

 phlogiston ; and as not only the foregoing experi- 

 ments, but most other phenomena of nature, seem 

 explicable as well, or nearly as well, upon this as 

 upon the commonly believed principle of phlogi- 

 ston," Cavendish proceeds to explain his experiments 

 according to the new views, expressing no decided 

 preference, however, for either system. But Kir- 

 wan, another English chemist, contested the point 

 much more resolutely. His theory identified in- 

 flammable air, or hydrogen, with phlogiston; and 

 in this view, he wrote a work which was intended 

 as a confutation of the essential part of the oxygen 

 theory. It is a strong proof of the steadiness and 

 clearness with which the advocates of the new 

 system possessed their principles, that they imme- 

 diately translated this work, adding, at the end of 

 each chapter, a refutation of the phlogistic doctrines 

 which it contained. Lavoisier, Berthollet, De Mor- 



* Thomson, ii. 133. Phil. Trans. 1784, p. 150. 



