character. A brief review of these discoveries shows how
completely they had subverted the old ideas of chemical elements
and chemical compounds. Of the four substances earth, air, fire,
and water, for many centuries believed to be elementary bodies,
not one has stood the test of the eighteenth-century chemists.
Earth had long since ceased to be regarded as an element, and
water and air had suffered the same fate in this century. And
now at last fire itself, the last of the four "elements" and the
keystone to the phlogiston arch, was shown to be nothing more
than one of the manifestations of the new element, oxygen, and
not "phlogiston" or any other intangible substance.

In this epoch of chemical discoveries England had produced such
mental giants and pioneers in science as Black, Priestley, and
Cavendish; Sweden had given the world Scheele and Bergman, whose
work, added to that of their English confreres, had laid the
broad base of chemistry as a science; but it was for France to
produce a man who gave the final touches to the broad but rough
workmanship of its foundation, and establish it as the science of
modern chemistry. It was for Antoine Laurent Lavoisier
(1743-1794) to gather together, interpret correctly, rename, and
classify the wealth of facts that his immediate predecessors and
contemporaries had given to the world.

The attitude of the mother-countries towards these illustrious
sons is an interesting piece of history. Sweden honored and
rewarded Scheele and Bergman for their efforts; England received
the intellectuality of Cavendish with less appreciation than the
Continent, and a fanatical mob drove Priestley out of the
country; while France, by sending Lavoisier to the guillotine,