¹ Yoshida, A., ‘Une nouvelle interprétation de la genèse des expériences de Lavoisier sur la combustion en 1772’, Historia scientiarum, (1984), 26, pp. 83–94.Google Scholar

² Oeuvres de Lavoisier—Correspondance, fasc. II (ed. Fric, R.), Paris, 1957, p. 408.Google Scholar

³ Cough, J., ‘Lavoisier's early career in science: an examination of some new evidence’, British Journal for the History of Science, (1968), 4, pp. 52–57.Google Scholar

⁴ See for example, Archives de l'Académie des Sciences, Lavoisier Papers, Dossier 251, ‘Idees et experiences a faire’.

⁵ See Guerlac, Henry, ‘The Lavoisier papers: A checkered history’, Archives International d'Histoire des Sciences, (1979), 29, pp. 95–100.Google Scholar

⁶ Meldrum, A.N., ‘Lavoisier's three notes on combustion’, Archeion, (1932), 14, pp. 15–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁷ Speter, M., ‘Kritisches über die Entstehung von Lavoisiers System’, Zeitschrift für angewandte Chemie, (1926), 39, pp. 578–582.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁸ Guerlac, H., Lavoisier—The Crucial Year, Ithaca, 1961.Google Scholar

⁹ Guerlac, H., ‘A lost memoir of Lavoisier’, Isis, (1959), pp. 125–129CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fric, R., ‘Contribution à l'étude de l'evolution des idées de Lavoisier sur la nature de l'air et sur la calcination des métaux’, Archives Internationales d'Histoire des Sciences, (1959), 12, pp. 138–145.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Finocchiaro, M., History of Science as Explanation, Detroit, 1973, pp. 57–85Google Scholar; Kohler, R.E., ‘The origin of Lavoisier's first experiments on combustion’, Isis, (1972), 63, 349–355CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Morris, R. J., ‘Lavoisier on fire and air: the memoir of July 1772’, Isis, (1969), 60, pp. 374–380CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Melhado, E., ‘Chemistry, physics and the chemical revolution’, Isis, (1985), 76, pp. 195–211.Google Scholar

¹¹ Perrin, C.E., ‘Lavoisier's thoughts on calcination and combustion, 1772–1773’, Isis, (1986), 77, pp. 647–666.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹² Perrin, C.E., ‘Continuity and divergence of research traditions: Lavoisier and the chemical revolution’, Osiris, New series, Vol 4 (1988).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹³ Lavoisier, , ‘Reflexions sur les experiences qu'on peut tenter a l'aide du miroir ardent’, Oeuvres de Lavoisier (eds Dumas, J.B., Grimaux, E.), 6 vols, Paris, 1862–1893, iii, 261–266Google Scholar. The text is also given by Guerlac, , op. cit. (8), pp. 208–214.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Archives of the Academy of Sciences, Lavoisier Papers, Dossier 1385 bis.

¹⁵ Guerlac, , op. cit. (9).Google Scholar

¹⁶ The two autograph drafts are located in the Archives of the Academy of Sciences, Lavoisier Papers, Dossier 1686. The first draft (heavily reworked) runs for four pages on a single sheet folded in folio; the second draft is a manuscript of seven half-pages. The recopied versions are in Dossier 1385 bis. (In Dossier 1385 bis I found a note on scrap paper that a document had been sent to the C.N.R.S. on 4–10–57 to be photographed for M. Guerlac; such traces of earlier prospectors are scattered throughout the Lavoisian mines.)

¹⁷ Duveen, D.I. and Klickstein, H.S., A Bibliography of the Works of Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, 1743–1794, London, 1954, p. 388.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Oeuvres, iii, 284–348.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Archives of the Academy of Sciences, Lavoisier Papers, Dossier 1686.

²⁰ Ibid.

²¹ Ibid.

²² Guerlac, , op. cit. (9). p. 209 (my emphasis).Google Scholar

²³ Of course.there is the alternative possibility, not considered explicitly by Lavoisier, that the French chemists had independently conceived views similar to Stahl's. In that case they might have ignored Stahl's theory because it did not appear significantly new or different.

²⁴ Guerlac had not seen the document itself (which had long been missing from the Academy) but used Fric's edited text, which he reproduced as an appendix; Guerlac, , op. cit. (8), pp. 215–223.Google Scholar

²⁵ Ibid., pp. 92–94. My suspicion is that the whole sequence of events at the Academy is another expression of the keen rivalry that existed between French and British scientists in the period. Some member(s) of the Academy had recently come across an account of Black's experiments, triggering a recollection that Nollet had made similar observations nearly twenty years earlier. So Nollet's paper was dug out and read, just as Venel's work on seltzer waters was resurrected following the arrival in France of Priestley's brochure on the impregnation of water with fixed air.

²⁶ Ibid., p. 223.

²⁷ In the Archives of the Academy of Sciences, Dossier 369 (the Systeme) and Dossier 370 (Essay sur la nature de l'air, dated 15 04 1773Google Scholar and also published by Fric) are located in the same large folder. Within that folder is an older and smaller folder bearing the title Essay sur la nature de lair, in Lavoisier's hand. I believe that when Fric first encountered the Système, he took its title from the folder. But the folder, I believe, more likely belonged to the other document.

²⁸ For the text of the note see Guerlac, , op. cit. (8), pp. 223–4.Google Scholar

²⁹ Otherwise how would Lavoisier even have known of Mitouard's possession of the German phosphorus?

³⁰ In Lavoisier's subsequent memoir, dated 20 October, a paragraph on combustion in closed vessels is also left incomplete. But from other remarks that he made there, it is evident that the supply of air was inadequate and much of the phosphorus simply distilled.

³¹ Kohler, , op. cit. (10)Google Scholar. For the text, see Guerlac, , op. cit. (8), pp. 224–227Google Scholar. The original is in the Archives of the Academy of Sciences, Lavoisier Papers, Dossier 1308 D. (The dossier contains another trace of an earlier prospector, an envelope containing Max Speter's correspondence with the Academy's archivist about this document.)

³² Guerlac, ibid., p. 224 (my emphasis).

³³ The design of the phosphoric acid project can be confirmed by examination of other items in the Lavoisier corpus. Lavoisier returned to that project a year later in the autumn of 1773; his laboratory notebooks show that he studied the combination of the acid with various earths, fixed and volatile alkali, and several metals. (See Berthelot, M., ‘Sur les registres de laboratoire de Lavoisier’, Comptes Rendus des Séances de l'Académie des Sciences: (1902), 135, pp. 549–557 (p. 554)Google Scholar. From his presentist perspective Berthelot found these experiments of little interest.) Lavoisier continued the work until he ran out of acid. Intending to prepare a new supply, he again put the project on the shelf. But other occupations not allowing him time for the tedious preparation, he finally presented his results as they stood on 21 March 1777. (Lavoisier, , ‘Mémoire sur la combustion du phosphore de Kunckel et sur la nature de l'acide qui résulte de cette combustion’, Oeuvres, ii, 139–152.Google Scholar) Still later he was able to obtain more acid and read a supplementary report on 18 November 1780. (Oeuvres, ii, 271–282).Google Scholar

³⁴ Guerlac, , ‘A Curious Lavoisier Episode’, Chymia (1961), 7, pp. 103–108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁵ Correspondance, ii, 389–390.Google Scholar

³⁶ Ibid., p. 397.

³⁷ See Perrin, C.E., ‘Lavoisier's thoughts on calcination and combustion, 1772–1773’, Isis, (1986), 77, pp. 647–666.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁸ See Guerlac, , op. cit. (8), pp. 228–230.Google Scholar

³⁹ The argument is a development of the case I have made elsewhere and for a somewhat different purpose; see Perrin, C.E., ‘Continuity and divergence of research traditions: Lavoisier and the chemical revolution’, Osiris, (1988), 4, (in press)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Here the revised argument is stated concisely and more definitively because the new evidence collected since completion of the earlier version strongly supports its thesis.

⁴⁰ Archives of the Academy of Sciences, Lavoisier Papers, Dossier 251, note 50; Oeuvres ii, 1–28.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Gough, J.B., ‘Lavoisier's memoirs on the nature of water and their place in the chemical revolution’, Ambix, (1983), 30, pp. 89–106 (100).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴² Experimental details of the phosphorus experiment set out here are taken from the November draft paper, see Perrin, , op. cit. (11), pp. 662–665.Google Scholar

⁴³ Ibid.

⁴⁴ At this point Lavoisier introduced the weight gain of metals as a matter of common knowledge and followed the logic of Stahlian chemistry to relate it to the newly determined gain in sulphur and phosphorus.

⁴⁵ Lavoisier reread Hales' experiments from his new perspective, finding support for his hypothesis, but it is unlikely that he had time to repeat them during the week between his sulphur experiment and the sealed note. (This is probably another example of his overstating the extent of his experimental base in anticipation that he would augment it before publication.) He had no direct demonstration that air entered the acids, but from his earlier trials on phosphorus and sulphur he did have qualitative observations supporting air absorption: as phosphorus, for example, burned under a bell jar, the visible vapours did not seep out under the jar, as one would expect from the combined effect of thermal expansion and release of vapours from the burning phosphorus—but appeared to be driven back by an inward flow of atmospheric air. He was also aware that the combustion would not proceed far if the air supply was cut off, as in closed vessels.

⁴⁶ See Perrin, , op. cit. (36), p. 662.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Correspondance, ii. 397.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Melhado, , op. cit. (10), pp. 209–210.Google Scholar