Note 769 — Chapter V · (continued 2)

Mr. Napier, in his Memoirs of Leslie, pp. 16, 17 (prefixed to Leslie's Treatises on Philosophy, Edinb. 1838), says, that he ‘composed the bulk of his celebrated work on Heat in the years 1801 and 1802;’ but that, in 1793, he propounded ‘some of its theoretical opinions, as well as the germs of its discoveries.’ It appears, however, from his own statement, that he was making experiments on heat, at all events, as early as 1791. See Leslie's Experimental Inquiry into the Nature and Propagation of Heat, London, 1804, p. 409.