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atmosphere , and its fitness for respiration , were materially dependent upon the functions of growing vegetables . Mayow , in 1674 , and Hales , in 1724 , had observed the production of
gaseous matter during the action of nitric acid upon the metals . 1 have before alluded to the very rude manner in which Mayow collected it . Hales ascertained its singular property of producing red fumes when mixed with common air . Dr . Priestley
resumed these inquiries , and pursued them with clever activity : he found , that , on mixing one hundred parts , by measure , of common air , with one hundred of the air procured by the
action of nitrous acid on copper , which he called nitrous gas , red fumes were produced , and there was a diminution of bulk equal to ninety-two parts in the two hundred j so that one hundred and eight parts only remained .
When fixed air was thus mixed with nitrous air , there was no diminution $ when air , contaminated by combustion or respiration , was used , the diminution was less than with purer air ; and with air taken from different situations , Dr . Priestley thought he obtained rather variable results .
Hence the beautiful application of nitrous air to the discovery of the fitness of other species of air , for combustion and respiration . It was for these discoveries tha ^ t the Council of the Koyal Society honoured Dr . Priestley by the presentation of Sir Godfrey Copley ' s medal , on the 30 th of November , 1733 , [ 177 S ] . *
* Sir Godfrey Copley originally bequeathed five guineas to be given at each anniversary meeting of the Royal Society , by the determination of the president and council , to the person who had been the author of the best paper of experimental observation for the past year . In process
of time , this pecuniary reward , which could never be an important consideration to a man of enlarged and philosophical mind , however narrow his circumstances might be , was changed into the more liberal form of a gold medal , in which form it is become
a truly honourable mark of distinction , and a just and laudable object of ambition . It was , no doubt , always usual with the Presidents , on tlie delivery of the medal , to pay some compliment to the gentleman on whom it was bestowed , but the custom of making a set speech on the occasion ,
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Sir John Pringle , who was then president , delivered , on this occasion , an elaborate and elegant discourse upon the different kinds of air , in
which , after expatiating upon the discoveries of his predecessors , he points out the especial merits of Priestley ' s investigations . In allusion to the purification of a tainted atmosphere by the growth of plants , the president has thus expressed himself : ** From these discoveries we are assured , that no vegetable grows in vain ; but that , from the oak of the forest to the grass of the field , every individual plant is serviceable to mankind ; if not always distinguished by
some private virtue , yet making a part of the whole which clealises and purifies our atmosphere . In this the fragrant rose and deadly nightshade co-operate \ nor is the herbage nor the woods that flourish in the most
remote and unpeopled regions unprofitable to us , nor we to them , considering- how constantly the winds convey to them our vitiated air , for our relief and for their nourishment . And if ever these salutary gales rise to storms and hurricanes , let us still trace and revere the ways of a
beneficent Being , who not fortuitously , but with design , not in wrath , but in mercy , thus shakes the water and the air together , to bury in the deep those putrid and pestilential effluvia which the vegetables on the face of the earth had been insufficient to consume / ' t
and of entering- into the history of that part of philosophy to which the expeiirnent related , was first introduced by Mr . Martin Folkes . The discourses , however , which he and his successors delivered , were very short , nnd were only inserted in the minute books of the Society ; none of them had ever been printed before Sir John Pringle was raised to the chair of
the Society . " Chalmers ' s Biographical Dictionary . —LAfe of Pringle . \ Dr . Franklin , in a letter upon the subject of this discovery to Dr . Priestley , has expressed himself as follows : " That the veg-etable creation should restore the air which is spoiled by the
animal part of it , looks like a rational system , and secins tu be of a piece with the rest . Thus , ( ire purifies water all tho world over . It pulines it by distillation when it raises it in vapours , and lets it fall in rain and farther still by filtration , when , keeping" it fluid , it sutlers that rain to percolate tke
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678 Mr . Brandes Estimate of Dr . Priestley s Chemical Discoveries *
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1818, page 678, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2482/page/14/
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