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292 x 235 mm. 4to. Pages 39-104. [Entire issue: vi, [2], (1)-187, [1 blank], 26, [1], [1 blank] pp.] 4 figs. on 1 engraved plate. Original plain blue wrappers; spine heavily chipped. Very good. This is Davy's third Bakerian Lecture read to the Royal Society 15 December 1808 and printed in the Philosophical Transactions. The paper contains his report of the decomposition of boracic acid by heating with potassium and his conclusion that the basis of the acid is a metal which he named boracium. His other experiments led to his conclusions that a) nitrogen contains oxygen, b) sulphur and phosphorus contain small amounts of hydrogen and oxygen and c) plumbago, charcoal and the diamond differ in physical properties because of the differences in chemical composition and not because of the arrangement of parts. The plate depicts Davy's apparatus. Davy's work in the years 1806-1812 "did more for chemistry than the 60 [years] which followed them." Mottelay, Bibliographical history of electricity & magnetism, p. 344. "At the end of 1808 [Davy] read his third Bakerian lecture. . . In it he disproved the idea advanced by Gay Lussac that potassium was a compound of hydrogen, not an element; but on the other hand he cast doubts on the elementary character of phosphorus, sulphur and carbon, though on this point he afterwards corrected himself. He also described the preparation of boron, for which at first he proposed the name boracium, on the impression that it was a metal." Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed., VII, p. 872. Cole, Chemical literature, 341; DNB, V, p. 640; DSB, III, p. 602; Fullmer, Sir Humphry Davy's published works, p. 54; Honeyman Sale 833; Mottelay, Bibliographical history of electricity & magnetism, p. 343; Partington, A history of chemistry, IV, p. 49; Poggendorf, I, col. 529; Zeitlinger, 3rd supplement, 2560. Seller Inventory # S13973
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