that most loudly proclaim his fame, but rather his labors in
the field of chemistry, a' recreative pursuit, that have en
twined his name with greatness and bestowed upon him a
world wide renown. An amateur in the use of apparatus
and methods, with but a meagre knowledge of chemistry,
one who accidentally made great discoveries, Joseph Priest
ley plucked light from the blackest darkness of ignorance.
Groping about in the field of chemistry he brought to light
facts that astonished the world and on which a new chemis
try has been built. He worked not with apparatus made by
skilled workmen, as to-day, but with that of his own manu
facture and invention or made under his direction by un
skilled mechanics. Gases being the great field of his labors
lie has been truthfully styled the “Father of Pneumatic
Chemistry.”
How many of you as you breathe the life-giving essence
of the air, think of the man who as secretary to Lord Shel
burne, on the first of August, seventeen hundred and seventy,
discovered oxygen, the essential principle of all life. That
man was none other than Joseph Priestley, the one time
stammering preacher of Nantwich. Though the discovery
of oxygen made Priestley famous and will perpetuate his
name, to him belongs the discovery of the essential of the
smelling salts, the boon of the journeying dame, ammonia
gas; of laughing gas, that gas which has made the one time
painful ordeal of the dentist’s chair almost a pleasure; of
muriatic acid; carbon monoxide; sulpher dioxide; nitric ox
ide and silicon fluoride.
His views as to religion may or may not have been
wrong, his theory of chemistry at fault, but we dare not con
tradict the fact that it was for views in advance of his day
that he was unduly censured and most brutally treated. It
is characteristic of the man that all who did not think as
Priestley thought were considered his opponents and were
subject to the attack of his pen. He was a man of such