deas. The reviewer of the _Medical Repository_ staff was
evidently impressed by it, for he said:

It must give pleasure to every philosophical mind to find the
United States becoming the theatre of such interesting discussion,

and then adds that the evidence which was weighty enough to turn such
men as Black and others from the phlogiston idea to that of Lavoisier--

has never yet appeared to Dr. Priestley considerable enough to
influence his judgment, or gain his assent.

Priestley, as frequently observed, entertained grave doubts in regard to
the constitution of metals. He thought they were "compounded" of a
certain earth, or calx, and phlogiston. Further he believed that when
the phlogiston flew away, "the splendour, malleability, and ductility"
of the metal disappeared with it, leaving behind a calx. Again, he
contended that when metals dissolved in acids the liberated "inflammable
air" (hydrogen) did not come from the 'decompounded water' but from the
phlogiston emitted by the metal.

Also, on the matter of the composition and decomposition of water, he
held very opposite ideas. The French School maintained "that hydrogenous
and oxygenous airs, incorporated by drawing through them the electrical
spark turn to _water_," but Priestley contended that "they combine into
_smoking nitrous acid_." And thus the discussion proceeded, to be
answered most intelligently, in 1797, by Adet,[5] whose arguments are
familiar to all chemists and need not therefore be here repeated. Of
more interest was the publication of two lectures on Combustion by
Maclean of Princeton. They filled a pamphlet of 71 pages. It appeared in
1797, and was, in brief, a refutation of Priestley's presentations, and
was heartily welcomed as evidence of the "growing taste in America for
this kind of inquiry." Among other things Maclean said of the various
ideas regarding combustion--"Becker's is incomplete, Stahl's though
ingenious, is defective; the antiphlogistic is simple, consistent and
sufficient, while Priestley's resembling Stahl's but in name, is
complicated, contradictory and inadequate."

Not all American chemists were ready to side track the explanations of
Priestley. The distinguished Dr. Mitchill wrote Priestley on what he
designated "an attempt to accommodate the Disputes among Chemists
concerning Phlogiston." This was in November, 1797. It is an ingenious
effort which elicited from Priestley (1798) his sincere thanks