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36 leg of mutton." "But," said the servant, "that will not be enough for five." "Then get two legs," was his reply.

Another story is told that Cavendish's banking account had accumulated to the extent of £80,000, and when his banker asked whether it should be invested, he replied, "Do what you like with it, but trouble me no more about it, or I will place my account elsewhere."

Although a marvellously accurate worker, Cavendish was not free from bias. Like Priestley, he was a phlogistian, and his chemical papers are written in the jargon of the school of Stahl. In 1766 he published his first paper, which was entitled "On Factitious Airs"; but before this time he wrote two papers: "Experiments on Arsenic" and "Experiments on Heat," which, however, due to his horror of publicity, were not published until after his death. In 1788 Cavendish published his famous paper, "Experiments on Air," in which he says: "As far as the experiments hitherto published extend, we scarcely know more of the nature of the phlogisticated part (nitrogen) of our atmosphere, than that it is not diminished by lime-water, caustic alkalis, or nitrous air; that it is unfit to support fire, or maintain life in animals; and that its specific gravity is not much less than that of common air; so that though the nitrous acid by being united to phlogiston is converted into air possessed of these properties, and, consequently, though it was reasonable to suppose that part at least of the phlogisticated air of the atmosphere