404 Proceedings of the Royal Society 
eight grains in the Eykum water, and ten grains in the Geyser 
water, of solids in 10,000, Black showed that about one-half con- 
sisted of silica dissolved by soda ; that the soda amounted to hal-f 
a grain in the former, and a whole grain in the latter ; that it 
was the means of dissolving more than six times its own weight 
of silica ; and he conjectured that this great dissolving power was 
partly communicated by very high heat, existing where the process 
of solution was constantly going on. 
In 1793, in a postscript to the Proceedings of the Society for 
that year, Dr Hope produces his well-known discovery of the 
mineral strontianite, his analysis of it, his discovery of the new 
earth, strontia, and his investigation of the properties of the 
earth itself and its compounds. This paper, which at once estab- 
lished for him a great name among chemists, and was given to the 
world when he was quite a young man, supplies internal evidence 
that Dr Hope possessed in an eminent degree all the qualifications 
for a profound analyst and discoverer — patience, inventiveness, 
accuracy, and acute discrimination. The wonder is, — which all 
his scientific friends have felt, but no one has thoroughly explained 
to his own satisfaction, — that with this first-rate investigation, and 
at the mere outset of scientific life, Dr Hope’s career as an analyst 
both began and ended. New earths, new alkalies, new acids, new 
metals, were constantly announced from all sides around by those 
engaged on the same field which he had shown he could fruitfully 
cultivate. But Dr Hope never undertook another chemical 
analysis. 
In 1788 Sir James Hall read an exposition of Lavoisier’s new 
Theory of Chemistry, being probably the first account given in 
Scotland of that philosopher’s great discoveries. Soon afterwards 
Hutton read a reply to Lavoisier and Sir James Hall, in an essay 
on Phlogiston. Both papers are lost to the world ; for, at the time 
when they were read, authors did not desire to print, and the Society 
did not publish, either in its Proceedings or its Transactions, 
scientific papers of a merely critical nature. We can easily under- 
stand, however, how stoutly Hutton would at that period stand up 
for the existence of phlogiston ; which, nevertheless, was doomed 
to die a sudden death at the hands of the French executioner. 
In 1796 Dr Hutton, in a paper entitled “A New Phenomenon 
