While Mr. Cavendish was extending the bounds of pneumatic chemistry, with the caution and precision of a Newton, Dr. Priestley, who had entered on the same career, was proceeding with a degree of rapidity quite unexampled; while from his happy talents and inventive faculties, he contributed no less essentially to the progress of the science, and certainly more than any other British chemist to its popularity. Joseph Priestley was born in 1733, at Fieldhead, about six miles from Leeds in Yorkshire. His father, Jonas Priestley, was a maker and dresser of woollen cloth, and his mother, the only child of Joseph Swift a farmer in the neighbourhood. Dr. Priestley was the eldest child; and, his mo…
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