30 



that had travelled over the whole range of natural philosophy, and they 

 are impressed with many striking marks of undisplayed knowledge, 

 and of that indifference to fame which in England is well known to have 

 been a prominent feature in the character of Cavendish, of whom 

 it has been handed down to us that " he * was peevishly impatient 

 of the inconveniences of eminence, detested flattery, and was uneasy 

 under merited praise." The same negligence of publicity belonged to 

 the characters of Newton, Black, and Cavendish, and their claims to 

 their greatest discoveries have only been substantiated by the interpo- 

 sition of their friends. 



What curious facts of this kind appear in the parts of these MSS. 

 which relate to mechanical, meteorological, magnetical, and electrical 

 subjects, I must leave to the examination of others; but I will mention 

 those which have occurred to me in looking over the chemical and 

 geological papers. 



The name of Cavendish has never been mentioned among geologists, 

 and I apprehend that it will occasion some surprise to those who have 

 most studied the history of geology, to learn that in journeys of the 

 date of 1787 he ascertained, in company with Blagden, by his own 

 personal observations, assisted by those of an almost equally unnamed, 

 but most acute and comprehensive observer, Mitchell, the entire se- 

 quence of all the great beds of English stratification, traced by their 

 mineralogical character, position, and dip, from the beds above the 

 chalk down to the slate-rocks. 



At a period when nothing had been published on the subject of 

 latent heat, and the knowledge of Black's discoveries scarcely extended 

 beyond the students of his class at Glasgow, we find Cavendish, with 

 no other information respecting them than the report of a single factf, 

 deducing all the laws of the generation and destruction of heat which 

 attend the conversion of elastic fluids into liquids, and liquids into 

 solids, from an independent and elaborate series of experiments which 

 the world has never heard of, adhering, as in his subsequent investi- 

 gation of the composition of water, to the Newtonian theory of heat, 

 and denying it that materiality and combining property which has 

 marked, down to the present day, the speculations of the school of 

 Black. These experiments include determinations of the specific heats 



* Brand's Preface to Supplement to Encycl. Brit. 



f This fact was, that " in distilling water or other liquors, the water in the 

 worm-tub is heated thereby much more than it would be by mixing with it a 

 quantity of boiling water equal to that which passes through the worm." — 

 See Appendix, p. 47. 



