Note 1 — Chapter I

The Gregorian Calendar was not adopted in Great Britain until 1751. In 1752 eleven days were left out of the Calendar, September 3rd being counted the 14th. The change of style probably accounts for the confusion in the various dates of Priestley’s birth given by different writers. In Chalmers’s General Biographical Dictionary the date is given as March 18; in Allen’s American Biographical and Historical Dictionary and in Thomson’s History of the Royal Society as March 24; Corry, in his Life of Priestley, gives March 24; Hoefer, in his Histoire de la Chimie, gives March 30, probably following Dumas’s Philosophie de Chimie; Cuvier, in his Eloge, says that he was born near Bristol in 1728! In a letter to Wedgwood, dated March 23, 1783, Priestley says in a postscript “This day I complete my half century.”