“PHLOGISTICATED AIR” INVESTIGATED BY CAVENDISH--HIS
DISCOVERY OF THE COMPOSITION OF WATER
While Lavoisier was engaged in experiments on oxygen, Cavendish,
too, was devoting his attention to the constituents of air, but in
a somewhat different manner. His early experiments led him to the
discovery of the composition of water; and it has already been pointed
out how necessary a knowledge of the true nature of hydrogen is to the
understanding of the phenomena of combustion. His second paper deals
with the inactive constituent of air, the mephitic portion, now known
as nitrogen or azote. But before considering these, a sketch of his
life will prove of interest.
The Honourable Henry Cavendish was a very singular man, retiring and
uncommunicative to a degree; hence little is known of his early life.
He was the elder son of Lord Charles Cavendish, who was the third son
of the second Duke of Devonshire. His only brother, Frederick, was
also an eccentric, but a very benevolent man, and the two brothers,
though they seldom met, lived on excellent terms with each other. Henry
Cavendish was born at Nice in October 1731. His mother died when he
was two years old. Nothing is known of his childhood and youth, save
that he attended Hackney School from 1742 to 1749, and that he went to
Cambridge in the end of 1749, and remained till 1753, without taking a
degree. After leaving Cambridge, it is supposed that he lived in London
for ten years. It is known that his allowance from his father amounted
to £500 a year, and that his rooms were a set of stables fitted up
for his accommodation. It is probable that this was his own choice,
and that he made use of them chiefly as a laboratory and a workshop.
Although at his father’s death and by the legacy of an aunt he acquired
a large fortune, he never spent more than a fraction of it. He left
more than a million sterling to his relative, Lord George Cavendish;
but they saw each other only once a year, and the interview seldom
lasted more than ten minutes. The writer of his obituary notice, M.
Biot, epigrammatically said:--“Il était le plus riche de tous les
savans, et le plus savant de tous les riches.”
[Illustration: H. Cavendish]
He was a regular attendant at the meetings of the Royal Society, of
which he was made a Fellow in 1760, and was a constant diner at the
Royal Society Club. It is said that he used to talk to his neighbour at
table so long as others did not join in the conversation; but if the
conversation took a general turn, he was silent.
His death took place in February 1810, and was as solitary as his
life. It is related by his servant that Cavendish, on feeling his end
approaching, dismissed him from the room, telling him to come back in
half an hour. He disobeyed instructions, and, being anxious, found some
pretext to enter the room. Cavendish ordered him away in a voice of
displeasure; and on returning, the man found his master dead.
Such a life demands our pity; yet, if an object of human life is to
give pleasure to its possessor, we can hardly say that Cavendish’s was
a failure. Ordinary mortals have a craving for the sympathy of their
fellows; Cavendish appears to have been devoid of any such sensation.
Indeed, his experiments were in many cases not published until long
after they had been made. He appears to have carried on his work for
his own information, and to have been indifferent to the impression
which his labours made on his fellow-men. Yet his inquiries cover a
more extensive field than those of almost any other man of science.
They begin with experiments on arsenic, by which he endeavoured to
determine the difference between the element arsenic and its two
oxides. He held that arsenic acid was more thoroughly “deprived of
phlogiston” than arsenious acid (_i.e._ more highly oxidised); and
on the same occasion he studied the effect of the addition of air to
nitric oxide, produced by the action of nitric acid on the element
arsenic and on arsenious oxide. His next experiments related to heat;
and had he published them, he would doubtless have anticipated Black in
his discovery of latent heat. His paper on “Factitious Airs,” published
in the _Philosophical Transactions_ for 1766, deals with the properties
of hydrogen, carbon dioxide, and the gases produced by the destructive
distillation of organic substances. As we shall see later, he supposed
that hydrogen, generated by the action of acids on metals, came out of
the metal, and was an unknown principle in combination with phlogiston,
if indeed it was not phlogiston itself; and this idea is not absurd,
for many metals, and indeed a very large number of minerals, evolve
hydrogen when heated, the gas having been “occluded” in their pores.
In 1772 he communicated privately to Dr. Priestley the results of a
series of experiments dealing with nitrogen. To prepare it, he passed
air repeatedly over red-hot charcoal, and absorbed the resulting
carbon dioxide in potash. The residue was nitrogen. His description
of it is:--“The specific gravity of this air was found to differ very
little from that of common air; of the two it seemed rather lighter.
It extinguished flame, and rendered common air unfit for making bodies
burn in the same manner as fixed air, but in a less degree, as a candle
which burned about 80 seconds in pure common air, and which went out
immediately in common air mixed with 6/55ths of fixed air, burned about
26 seconds in common air mixed with the same proportion of this burnt
air.”[23] He named it, as usual, “mephitic air,” and it is certain that,
although Cavendish did not publish his results, his discovery was
not later in date than Rutherford’s. Dealing next with the phenomena
observed when that curious fish, the torpedo, produces shocks, he
ascribed them to the discharge of electricity, and he was the first
to distinguish between intensity, or potential, and quantity of
electricity, a distinction now familiar to all.
It was in 1777 that he commenced his beautiful “Experiments on Air,”
the first account of which was published in 1783. They led to the
discovery of the constant quantitative composition of the atmosphere,
of the compound nature of water, and of the composition of nitric acid,
and pointed the way to the recent discovery of argon.
In determining the composition of the atmosphere, Cavendish made use of
nitric oxide in presence of water, as a means of removing oxygen. This
process, originally devised by Mayow, was rediscovered by Priestley,
who employed it to ascertain the “goodness” of various samples of
air; in Cavendish’s hands it became an accurate quantitative method.
The title of his paper, published in the _Philosophical Transactions_
for 1783, is “Of a new Eudiometer.” The term “eudiometer,” signifying
“measurer of goodness,” was devised when it was supposed that ordinary
air presented considerable variations in its power of supporting
respiration and combustion, according to the seasons, and according
to the place from which it was collected. Dr. Ingenhousz had found a
greater absorption when air from near the sea-coast was tested by
Priestley’s method with nitric oxide, than when town-air was employed;
and he ascribed the salubrious nature of sea-air to its being richer
in “vital air.” The Abbé Fontana, too, had made similar experiments,
and had come to similar conclusions. Cavendish modified Fontana’s
apparatus, rendering it capable of giving more accurate results; and
during the last half of the year 1781 he analysed the air collected on
sixty days, some fine, some wet, and some foggy. He also collected air
from different localities, sometimes at Marlborough Street, sometimes
at Kensington, which was then a country village. The results of his
analyses establish as the composition of air, freed from carbon dioxide
by potash:
79·16 per cent of phlogisticated air (nitrogen).
20·84 per cent of dephlogisticated air (oxygen).
This result does not differ materially from those obtained by the best
modern analyses, which give, within very small variations:
79·04 per cent of nitrogen and argon,
20·96 per cent of oxygen,
after absorption of carbon dioxide, ammonia, and water-vapour.
In the following year, 1784, Cavendish published the first of his great
memoirs, entitled _Experiments on Air_. His experiments were made
principally “with a view to find out the cause of the diminution which
common air is well known to suffer by all the various ways in which it
is phlogisticated, and to discover what becomes of the air thus lost or
condensed.”
Cavendish chose processes for “phlogisticating” air in the course of
which no fixed air should be produced. He therefore avoided the use of
animal and vegetable materials, and confined himself to combustibles,
such as sulphur or phosphorus, to the calcination of metals, the
explosion of inflammable air, and the mixture of nitrous air. He adds
as a suggestion, “Perhaps it may be supposed that I ought to add to
these the electric spark; but I think it much more likely that the
phlogistication of the air, and production of fixed air, in this
process is owing to the burning of some inflammable matter in the
apparatus.” We shall see later what magnificent results arose from this
last mode of “phlogisticating” air.
He begins with an account of a repetition of an experiment of Mr.
Waltire’s, related by Priestley, in which a mixture of hydrogen and air
was exploded in a copper vessel, with the result that they observed
a loss of a few grains in weight; it is also stated by Waltire that
if the explosion took place in a glass vessel, it became dewy, “which
confirmed an opinion he had long entertained, that common air deposits
its moisture by phlogistication.” But Cavendish, using a glass vessel
of much greater capacity than Waltire’s, could remark no change of
weight; and he concluded that 423 measures of hydrogen, or “inflammable
air” as he named it, are “nearly sufficient to completely phlogisticate
1000 of common air, and that the bulk of the air remaining after the
explosion is then very little more than ⅘ths of the common air
employed; so that, as common air cannot be reduced to a much less bulk
than that, by any method of phlogistication, we may safely conclude
that, when they are mixed in this proportion and exploded, almost all
the inflammable air, and about ⅕th part of the common air, lose their
elasticity, and are condensed into the dew which lines the glass.
“The better to examine the nature of this ‘dew,’ 500,000 grain measures
of inflammable air were burnt with about 2½ times that quantity of
common air, and the burnt air made to pass through a glass cylinder 8
feet long and about ¾ of an inch in diameter, in order to deposit the
dew”. “By this means upwards of 135 grains of water were condensed in
the cylinder, which had no taste or smell, and which left no sensible
sediment when evaporated to dryness, neither did it yield any pungent
smell during the evaporation; in short, it seemed pure water”. “And
by this experiment it appears that this dew is plain water, and
consequently that almost all the inflammable and about ⅕th of the
common air are turned into pure water.”
But on firing little by little a mixture of “dephlogisticated air” or
oxygen, obtained from red precipitate (that is, mercuric oxide prepared
by heating the nitrate), with twice its volume of “inflammable air” or
hydrogen, the resulting water was acid to the taste, and on evaporation
with alkali gave a small quantity--about 2 grains--of nitre. Cavendish
suspected that the acid came from the nitrate of mercury in his
red precipitate, and, to test this, procured his oxygen from other
sources--from red-lead and sulphuric acid, and from the leaves of
plants--but still with the same result; nitric acid was formed.
Repeating the experiment so as to have present an excess of hydrogen,
he found that no acid was produced.
“From the foregoing experiments it appears that when a mixture of
inflammable and dephlogisticated air is exploded in such proportion
that the burnt air is not much phlogisticated, the condensed liquor
contains a little acid, which is always of the nitrous kind,
whatever substance the dephlogisticated air is procured from; but
if the proportion be such that the burnt air is almost entirely
phlogisticated, the condensed liquor is not at all acid, but seems pure
water, without any addition whatever; and as, when they are mixed in
that proportion, very little air remains after the explosion, almost
the whole being condensed, it follows that almost the whole of the
inflammable and dephlogisticated air is converted into pure water.” The
quantity of uncombined gas was so small that it must be regarded as an
impurity. “There can be little doubt that it proceeds only from the
impurities mixed with the dephlogisticated and inflammable air, and
consequently that if those airs could be obtained perfectly pure, the
whole would be condensed.”
The next paragraph is interesting. “During the last summer also [of
1781] a friend of mine gave some account of them [these experiments]
to Mr. Lavoisier, as well as of the conclusion drawn from them, that
dephlogisticated air is only water deprived of phlogiston; but at
that time, so far was Mr. Lavoisier from thinking any such opinion
warranted, that, till he was prevailed upon to repeat the experiment
himself, he found some difficulty in believing that nearly the whole of
the two airs could be converted into water.”
And next comes an important deduction. “Phlogisticated air appears
to be nothing else than the nitrous acid united to phlogiston; for
when nitre is deflagrated with charcoal, the acid is almost entirely
converted into this kind of air.” This is the first statement of the
true relation between nitrogen and nitric acid; we should now state the
matter by the expression, “Nitrogen is nothing else than nitric acid
deprived of oxygen.” And the further deduction is made that “it is
well known that nitrous acid is also converted by phlogistication
into nitrous air, in which respect there seems a considerable analogy
between that and the vitriolic acid; for this acid, when united to a
smaller proportion of phlogiston, forms the volatile sulphurous acid
and vitriolic acid air, both of which, by exposure to the atmosphere,
lose their phlogiston, though not very fast, and are turned back
into the vitriolic acid; but when united to a greater proportion
of phlogiston, it forms sulphur, which shows no signs of acidity.”
“In like manner the nitrous acid, united to a certain quantity of
phlogiston, forms nitrous acid and nitrous air, which readily quit
their phlogiston to common air; but when united to a different, in
all probability a larger quantity, it forms phlogisticated air, which
shows no signs of acidity, and is still less disposed to part with its
phlogiston than sulphur.”
But the origin of the acid in water made from inflammable and
dephlogisticated air was still unexplained. To settle this point
Cavendish added to an explosive mixture of oxygen and hydrogen a tenth
of its volume of nitrogen, and found that the water was much more
strongly acid; and if hydrogen was much in excess, a still greater
amount of nitric acid was produced. After relating these experiments he
proceeds:--
“From what has been said there seems the utmost reason to think that
dephlogisticated air is only water deprived of its phlogiston, and
that inflammable air, as was before said, is either phlogisticated
water or else pure phlogiston, but in all probability the former.” In
a foot-note he gives his reason for the choice, viz. that it requires
a red-heat to cause hydrogen and oxygen to combine, while nitrous air
combines with oxygen at the ordinary temperature; now, if hydrogen
were pure phlogiston, one would expect it to combine more readily than
nitrous gas, which has been shown to be a compound of nitric acid with
phlogiston. It seems inexplicable that dephlogisticated air should
refuse to unite at the ordinary temperature with pure phlogiston, when
it is able to extract it from substances with which it has an affinity.
Hence it is unlikely that hydrogen is phlogiston itself.
And a few paragraphs farther on Cavendish very nearly discards the
phlogistic theory by this statement: “Instead of saying air is
phlogisticated or dephlogisticated by any means, it would be more
strictly just to say, it is deprived of, or receives, an addition of
dephlogisticated air; but as the other expression is convenient, and
can scarcely be considered as improper, I shall still frequently make
use of it in the remainder of this paper.”
And now we come to the consideration of Lavoisier’s new theory, and
its rejection in favour of the old one of phlogiston. It is curious to
follow the reasoning which made such an exceptionally acute thinker as
Cavendish deliberately reject the true explanation. Cavendish first
states his results in Lavoisier’s terms:--
“According to this hypothesis, we must suppose that water consists
of inflammable air united to dephlogisticated air; that nitrous air,
vitriolic acid air (sulphur dioxide), and the phosphoric acid are
also combinations of phlogisticated air, sulphur, and phosphorus with
dephlogisticated air; and that the two former, by a further addition
of the same substance, are reduced to the common nitrous and vitriolic
acids; that the metallic calces consist of the metals themselves united
to the same substance, commonly, however, with a mixture of fixed air;
that on exposing the calces of the perfect metals to a sufficient
heat, all the dephlogisticated air is driven off, and the calces are
restored to their metallic form; but as the calces of the imperfect
metals are vitrified by heat, instead of recovering the metallic
form, it should seem as if all the dephlogisticated air could not be
recovered from them by heat alone. In like manner, according to this
hypothesis, the rationale of the production of dephlogisticated air
from red precipitate is, that during the solution of the quicksilver
in the acid and the subsequent calcination, the acid is decompounded,
and quits part of its dephlogisticated air to the quicksilver, whence
it comes over in the form of nitrous air, and leaves the quicksilver
behind united to dephlogisticated air, which, by a further increase
of heat, is driven off, while the quicksilver resumes its metallic
form. In procuring dephlogisticated air from nitre, the acid is also
decompounded; but with this difference, that it suffers some of its
dephlogisticated air to escape, while it remains united to the alkali
itself in the form of phlogisticated nitrous acid. As to the production
of dephlogisticated air from plants, it may be said that vegetable
substances consist chiefly of three different bases, one of which
[hydrogen], when united to dephlogisticated air, forms water; another
[carbon] fixed air; and the third phlogisticated air [nitrogen]; and
that, by means of vegetation, each of these substances are decomposed,
and yield their dephlogisticated air; and that, in burning, they again
acquire dephlogisticated air, and are restored to their pristine form.
“It seems, therefore, from what has been said, as if the phenomena of
nature might be explained very well on this principle, without the help
of phlogiston; and indeed, as adding dephlogisticated air to a body
comes to the same thing as depriving it of its phlogiston and adding
water to it, and as there are perhaps no bodies destitute of water,
and as I know no way by which phlogiston may be transferred from one
body to another, without leaving it uncertain whether water is not
at the same time transferred, it will be very difficult to determine
by experiment which of these opinions is the truest; but as the
commonly-received principle of phlogiston explains all phenomena, at
least as well as Mr. Lavoisier’s, I have adhered to that.”
“Another thing which Mr. Lavoisier endeavours to prove is that
dephlogisticated air is the acidifying principle. From what has been
explained, it appears that this is no more than saying that acids
lose their acidity by uniting to phlogiston, which, with regard to
the nitrous, vitriolic, phosphoric, and arsenical acids, is certainly
true”. “But as to the marine acid and acid of tartar, it does not
appear that they are capable of losing their acidity by any union with
phlogiston.”
Here Cavendish does not consider the question of gain of weight on
loss of phlogiston, or if he does, he must ascribe it to simultaneous
entry of water. And experimental research at that time was not far
enough advanced to enable him to decide finally as to the truth of this
hypothesis.
In his next memoir, read before the Royal Society on June 2nd, 1785,
Cavendish relates experiments on the passage of electric sparks through
air, the experiment having first been tried by Priestley. Priestley
says:[24]--“Lastly, the same effect [_i.e._ the diminution of the volume
of common air], I find, is produced by the _electric spark_, though I
had no expectation of this event when I made the experiment.” And
again:--“At the time of my former publication, I had found that taking
the _electric spark_ in given quantities of several kinds of air had a
very remarkable effect on them, that it diminished common air and made
it noxious, making it deposit its fixed air exactly like any phlogistic
process; from whence I concluded that the electric matter either is or
contains phlogiston.”
Cavendish had mentioned this process casually as one of the methods of
phlogisticating air; in beginning his second paper he says:--“I now
find that, though I was right in supposing the phlogistication of the
air does not proceed from phlogiston communicated to it by the electric
spark, and that no part of the air is converted into fixed air; yet
that the real cause of the diminution is very different from what I
suspected, and depends upon the conversion of phlogisticated air into
nitrous acid.” The apparatus he used was very simple. It consisted
of a glass siphon filled with mercury, each leg dipping into a glass
likewise containing mercury; the air was admitted by a gas-pipette into
the bend of the siphon, and on connecting the mercury in one of the
glasses with a ball placed near the prime conductor of an electric
machine, and the other with the earth, sparks could be made to pass
from the mercury in one limb to that in the other.
The product obtained by passing sparks through air in this manner
turned litmus red, and gave rise to no cloud in lime-water, while the
air was reduced to two-thirds of its original volume; nor did the
lime-water give a precipitate on introducing some fixed air, this
showing that it had been saturated by an acid. It was found, too, that
“soap-lees,” or solution of caustic potash, if present, diminished
the volume more rapidly than did lime-water; and repeated trials
proved that “when five parts of pure dephlogisticated air were mixed
with three parts of common air, almost the whole of the air was made
to disappear.” The nitrate of potassium thus produced caused paper
soaked in it and dried to deflagrate; and it contained no sulphuric
acid. “There is no reason to think that any other acid entered into it
except the nitrous.” But it gave a precipitate with silver nitrate;
and Cavendish, suspecting that this was silver nitrite, prepared some
potassium nitrite by heating the nitrate; on comparing the white
precipitate which this solution gave with silver nitrate with that
obtained from his “soap-lees,” he found them identical. There was
therefore no “muriatic acid” present, which would have yielded chloride
of silver, of appearance somewhat similar to the nitrite.
As it had previously been shown to be probable that phlogisticated
air is nitrous air united with phlogiston, and that nitrous air is
nitric acid united with phlogiston, “we may safely conclude that in
the present experiments the phlogisticated air was enabled, by means
of the electric spark, to unite to, or form a chemical combination
with, the dephlogisticated air, and was thereby reduced to nitrous
acid, which united to the soap-lees and formed a solution of nitre; for
in these experiments the two airs actually disappeared, and nitrous
acid was actually formed in their room”. “A further confirmation of
the above-mentioned opinion is that, as far as I can perceive, no
diminution of air is produced when the electric spark is passed either
through pure dephlogisticated air or through perfectly phlogisticated
air, which indicates a necessity of a combination of these two airs to
produce the acid. Moreover, it was found in the last experiment that
the quantity of nitre procured was the same that the soap-lees would
have produced if saturated with nitrous acid; which shows that the
production of the nitre was not owing to any decomposition of the
soap-lees.”
Nothing more clearly shows the care with which Cavendish reasoned than
these last quotations. No loophole is left unstopped; every precaution
is taken to make the proof as faultless as it is possible for a proof
to be.
But this was not enough. It was necessary for Cavendish to show
that, so far as he could ascertain it experimentally, _all_ the
phlogisticated air was capable of combining with dephlogisticated air
to form nitre. This he next proceeded to do.
“As far as the experiments hitherto published extend, we scarcely know
more of the phlogisticated part of our atmosphere than that it is not
diminished by lime-water, caustic alkalies, or nitrous air; that it
is unfit to support fire or maintain life in animals; and that its
specific gravity is not much less than that of common air; so that
though the nitrous acid, by being united to phlogiston, is converted
into air possessed of these properties, and consequently, though it was
reasonable to suppose that part at least of the phlogisticated air
of the atmosphere consists of this acid united to phlogiston, yet it
might fairly be doubted whether the whole is of this kind, or whether
there are not in reality many different substances confounded together
by us under the name of dephlogisticated air. I therefore made an
experiment to determine whether the whole of a given portion of the
phlogisticated air of the atmosphere could be reduced to nitrous acid,
or whether there was not a part of a different nature from the rest,
which would refuse to undergo that change. The foregoing experiments,
indeed, in some measure decided this point, as much the greatest part
of the air let up into the tube lost its elasticity; yet, as some
remained unabsorbed, it did not appear for certain whether that was of
the same nature as the rest or not. For this purpose I diminished a
similar mixture of dephlogisticated and common air in the same manner
as before, till it was reduced to a small part of its original bulk. I
then, in order to decompound as much as I could of the phlogisticated
air which remained in the tube, added some dephlogisticated air to it,
and continued the spark until no further diminution took place. Having
by these means condensed as much as I could of the phlogisticated
air, I let up some solution of liver of sulphur to absorb the
dephlogisticated air; after which only a small bubble of air remained
unabsorbed, which certainly was not more than 1/120th of the bulk of
the phlogisticated air let up into the tube; so that, if there is
any part of the phlogisticated air of our atmosphere which differs
from the rest, and cannot be reduced to nitrous acid, we may safely
conclude that it is not more than 1/120th part of the whole.” We shall
afterwards see that this is a marvellously close estimate. There is
actually 1/84th part of the supposed nitrogen of the air which will not
combine with oxygen when sparked with it in presence of potash.
But there still remained, in Cavendish’s opinion, one point unproved.
It was still conceivable that the potash might contain some
“inflammable matter” which would diminish the air on sparking, and
therefore oxygen nearly pure was sparked in presence of potash; but
only a very small diminution of volume occurred, owing probably to some
nitrogen present as an impurity in the oxygen. Water was substituted
for potash with the same result; but if litmus was added to the water
the colour was discharged, and lime-water introduced into the tube
gave a cloud, showing that “the litmus, if not burnt, was at least
decompounded, so as to lose entirely its purple colour and to yield
fixed air; so that, though soap-lees cannot be decompounded by the
process, yet the solution of litmus can, and so very likely might the
solutions of many other combustible substances.”
Such are the chemical researches of Cavendish. Of all experimenters
on the subject he was undoubtedly the greatest, though Mayow and
Scheele were near rivals. But his researches were so complete that it
is scarcely possible to criticise. He was not content with partial
results: every point was proved and re-proved, and every possibility
of erroneous conclusion was allowed for. It is curious that he did not
employ the balance to check his results. Had he done so he could not
have remained an adherent of the phlogistic theory. Although, as we
have seen, he was perfectly acquainted with the method in which his
results were interpreted by Lavoisier, he chose the old well-trodden
path leading to the wilderness of distorted facts. Lavoisier tried to
repeat Cavendish’s experiments, but without success; and in 1788 the
last part of his _Experiments on Air_ was published, in which he
recorded the successful repetition by a Committee of the Royal Society
of the conversion of nitrogen into nitric acid by the electric spark in
presence of oxygen and potash.
His remaining papers deal with meteorological and astronomical
subjects. One, published in 1790, refers to the height of a remarkable
aurora seen in 1784; another to the civil year of the Hindoos; and
another to a method for reducing lunar distances. And in 1798 his
famous memoir on the density of the earth appeared. It would be quite
beyond the province of this book to enter into any detail regarding
it; but it may be remarked in passing that the method consisted in
measuring, by means of a torsion balance, the attraction of one leaden
ball for another, and that recent experiments, made with the utmost
refinement, have barely altered the number which he obtained,
5·4, to 5·527.
His last paper, on an improvement in a machine for dividing
astronomical instruments, was published in 1809, the year before his
death.
Nothing has been said here regarding the rival claims of Watt to the
discovery of the composition of water, and little need be said. The
discovery was made by both in 1784, yet Cavendish visited Watt at
Birmingham in 1785, and was apparently on the best of terms with him;
and Watt, as proved by Cavendish’s diary, showed him many of his
devices connected with the steam-engine. There can be no doubt that
Watt had also discovered that when hydrogen and oxygen are exploded
together water is the sole product, but he coupled the phenomenon with
views involving the material nature of heat, or caloric, as it was then
called, which Cavendish repudiated.
Cavendish’s later work was carried out in a villa at Clapham, which
was fitted as a laboratory, workshop, and observatory, but he had
a town-house near the British Museum, at the corner of Gower Street
and Montague Place. He had also a library in Dean Street, Soho, which
was available for any scientific man who chose to present himself. So
singular were Cavendish’s habits that when he wished a book he went to
this house and borrowed it as from a public library, giving a receipt
for it.
Of all men, Cavendish was probably the most singular, but there can be
no question of his extraordinary genius.
[23] _Brit. Assoc. Report_, 1839, p. 64.
[24] _Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air_, vol. i.
p. 181, and vol. ii. p. 238. Second edition, 1776.