"was never remarkable for neatness. … His bottles were of every shape, size, and colour, and his apparatus was of the most humble and inexpensive description. He often performed experiments at the cost of a few shillings on which others would spend as many pounds." What wonderful results were obtained with such meagre appliances! It may be asked whether the laboratories of Lavoisier, Priestley, and Dalton, with their meagre appliances, produced better work than the luxuriously-fitted laboratories of to-day. The question is not easily answered. It must, however, have been simply delightful to have worked under Lavoisier, Priestley, or Dalton, each a genius and pioneer in the early days of modern chemistry. Lavoisier and Dalton were the architects of a new chemistry—a chemistry which has stood the test of time, and is of the greatest value to all nations—in fact, the "wealth of nations."
In 1803 Dalton published a paper "On the Absorption of Gases by Water and other Liquids." This memoir had an important bearing on Henry's law discovered in the same year.
The first account of Dalton's famous atomic theory appeared in Thomson's Chemistry in 1807, he having told Thomson of his experiments and deductions. In 1808 Dalton published his New System of Chemical Philosophy, in which the theory of atoms was fully expounded; and he described experiments directed towards the estimation
