s to Lindsey, written in April 1800, he
expresses himself in the following most interesting way relative to his
scientific engagements. American men of science will welcome it: This is
the message:

I send along with this an account of a course of experiments of as
much importance as almost any that I have ever made. Please to
shew it to Mr. Kirwan, and give it either to Mr. Nicholson for his
journal, or to Mr. Phillips for his magazine, as you please. I was
never more busy or more successful in this way, when I was in
England; and I am very thankful to Providence for the means and
the leisure for these pursuits, which next to theological studies,
interest me the most. Indeed, there is a natural alliance between
them, as there must be between the word and the works of God.

He was now at work apparently in his own little laboratory adjacent to
his dwelling place. For more than a century this structure has remained
practically as it was in the days of Priestley. In it he did remarkable
things, in his judgment; thus refuting the general idea that after his
arrival in America nothing of merit in the scientific direction was
accomplished by him. The satisfactory results, mentioned to Lindsey,
were embodied in a series of "Six Chemical Essays" which eventually
found their way into the Transactions of the American Philosophical
Society. It is a miscellany of observations. In it are recorded the
results found on passing the "vapour of spirit of nitre" over iron
turnings, over copper, over perfect charcoal, charcoal of bones, melted
lead, tin and bismuth; and there appears a note to the effect that in
Papin's digester "a solution of caustic alkali, aided by heat, made a
_liquor silicum_ with pounded flint glass." There is also given a
description of a pyrophorus obtained from iron and sulphur. More
interesting, however, was the account of the change of place in
different kinds of air, "through several interposing substances," in
which Priestley recognized distinctly for the first time, the phenomena
of gaseous diffusion. There are also references to the absorption of air
by water, and of course, as one would expect from the Doctor, for it
never failed, there is once more emphasized "certain facts pertaining to
phlogiston." His friends were quite prepared for such statements. They
thought of Joseph Priestley and involuntarily there arose the idea of
phlogiston.

The little w