Note 36 — Chapter IV · Application of the Idea of Substance in Chemistry.

The Rev. W. Vernon Harcourt, Address to the British Association, 1839.—Since the first edition of this work was published, and also since the second edition of the History of the Inductive Sciences, Mr. Watt’s correspondence bearing upon the question of the Composition of Water has been published by Mr. Muirhead. I do not find, in this publication, any reason for withdrawing what I have stated in the text above: but with reference to the statement in the History, it appears that Mr. Cavendish’s claim to the discovery was not uncontested in his own time. Mr. Watt had looked at the composition of water, as a problem to be solved, perhaps more distinctly than Mr. Cavendish had done; and he conceived himself wronged by Mr. Cavendish’s putting forwards his experiment as the first solution of this problem.