Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air Quotes

“Joseph Priestley”

“History of chemistry”

“Newton, as he had very little knowledge of air, so he had few doubts concerning it.”

“If a man be not mistaken in the principal object of his pursuits, he has no occasion to distress himself about lesser things.”

“Wikipedia: Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air”

“Men of leisure, spirit, and ingenuity, in the middle ranks of life... is a circumstance that promises better for the continuance of this progress in useful knowledge than any noble or royal patronage.”

“On the 17th of August 1771, I put a sprig of mint into a quantity of air, in which a wax candle had burned out, and found that, on the 27th of the same month, another candle burned perfectly well in it.”

“Priestley had discovered in 1772 that metals on calcination absorbed at most one-fifth of the volume of air in which they were enclosed.”

“It is enough for us to see that nature is inexhaustible, that it is a rich mine, in which we shall never dig in vain, and that it is open to infinitely more labourers than are now employed in exploring its contents, or in digging for them.”

“I have... repeatedly cautioned my readers... that they are to consider new facts only as discoveries and mere deductions from those facts, as of no kind of authority; but to draw all conclusions, and form all hypotheses, for themselves.”

“It will be seen that my apparatus for experiments on air is in fact nothing more than that of Dr. Hales, Dr. Brownrigg, and Mr. Cavendish, diversified and made a little more simple.”

“Google Books
• Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air (1790)
Vol.1, Vol.2, Vol.3.”

“Let us not... contend about merit, but let us all be intent on forwarding the common enterprize, and equally enjoy any progress we may make towards succeeding in it; and above all, let us acknowledge the guidance of that Great Being, who has put a spirit in man, and whose inspiration giveth him understanding.”

“When this fixed air is very strong, the smoke of a small quantity of gunpowder fired in it will be wholly retained by it, no part escaping into the common air. ...if ...any of the fixed air be thrown over the side of the vessel the smoke, which is mixed with it will fall to the ground, as if it was so much water, the fixed air being heavier than common air.”

“But having afterwards procured a lens of twelve inches diameter, and twenty inches focal distance, I proceeded with great alacrity to examine, by the help of it, what kind of air a great variety of substances, natural and factitious, would yield, putting them into the vessels represented fig. a, Plate IV. which I filled with quicksilver, and kept inverted in a bason of the same.”

“I have been so happy, as by accident to have hit upon a method of restoring air, which has been injured by the burning of candles, and to have discovered at least one of the restoratives which nature employs for this purpose. It is vegetation. This restoration of vitiated air, I conjecture, is effected by plants imbibing the phlogistic matter with which it is overloaded.”

“Archive.org
• Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air
(1774) Vol. 1, (1775) Vol. 2, (1777) Vol. 3.”

“There are, I believe, very few maxims in philosophy that have laid firmer hold upon the mind, than that air, meaning atmospherical air, (free from various foreign matters, which were always supposed to be dissolved, and intermixed with it) is a simple elementary substance, indestructible, and unalterable, at least as much so as water is supposed to be.”

“When a sufficient number of new facts shall be discovered (towards which even imperfect hypotheses will contribute) a more general theory will soon present itself; and perhaps to the most incurious and least sagacious eye. Thus, when able navigators have, with great labour and judgment, steered towards an undiscovered country, a common sailor, placed at the mast head, may happen to get the first sight of the land.”

“One might have imagined that, since common air is necessary to vegetable, as well as to animal life, both plants and animals had affected it in the same manner; and I own I had that expectation, when I first put a sprig of mint into a glass jar, standing inverted in a vessel of water; but when it had continued growing there for some months, I found that the air would neither extinguish a candle, nor was it at all inconvenient to a mouse, which I put into it.”