The life of the Hon. Henry Cavendish : including abstracts of his more important scientific papers, and a critical inquiry into the claims of all the alleged discoverers of the composition of water / by George Wilson.

George Wilson

Date:: 1851

Credit: The life of the Hon. Henry Cavendish : including abstracts of his more important scientific papers, and a critical inquiry into the claims of all the alleged discoverers of the composition of water / by George Wilson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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$Irom the latter to the former remains among the Cavendish MSS dated January 5 1783. It refers to Cavendish's Rules and directVonsfor the choice ot hills having a considerable attraction, which he had furnished to Maskelyne. Cavendish was a member of the Committee of Attrac- tion, appointed by the Royal Society to assist Maskelyne in his search lor a mountain suitable for his experiment, and the account quoted must have been given before June, 1774, when he began his observa- tions on Schehallien* Robison does not explicitly claim the method described by him as his own device. Perhaps, however, he devised the process for himself; at all events, the suggestion of Fundy Bay as specially suitable for trying the supposed experiment was his, and so was the application of a syphon to indicate the attraction. The remaining papers have been referred to in the Personal Narra- tive. I will only further remark concerning them, that they are all important. That on the Height of a Luminous Arch] has been commented on by Dalton.J The paper on the Civil Tear of the Hindoos% should be read in connexion with a work of high authority, with the loan of which I have been favoured by James Dalmahoy, Esq. It is entitled Kala Sanhalita, a collection of memoirs on the various modes according to which the nations of the southern parts of India divide time, &c. By Lieutenant-Colonel John Warren. Madras, 1825. Cavendish's latest published paper, that, namely, on the Division of Astronomical Instruments, \\ is commented on in the Encyclopeedia Brittanica, art. Graduation. Finally, I may notice that among the Cavendish MSS. I have found a paper on the Density of the Atmosphere of the Earth and of Jupiter. In this Cavendish supposes the air to con- sist of particles disposed as in the angular points of cubes. He then shows, {that if the density of the air be diminished beyond a certain limit, depending on the weight of particles of air, its elasticity will not be sufficient to support the weight of the next row of particles. The necessary consequence of this hypothesis is, that the atmosphere has a definite limit; and this conclusion seems evidently to anticipate WoUas- ton's speculations on the same subject.IT * Weld's History of the Royal Society, vol, ii. pp. 79—80. t Ptiil. Tram. 1790, pp. 101 and 105. % Meteorological Essays, 2nd. ed., p. 146. § Phil. Tram. 1792, pp. 383—399. |1 Ibid. 1809, pp. 221—231.$