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 and Pennsylvania Gazette.’ It was more solid than lively, and included reprints of Chambers's ‘Universal Dictionary’ and Defoe's ‘Religious Courtship.’ It proved a failure, and nine months afterwards it was purchased by Meredith and Franklin. Keimer endeavoured to retaliate on his rivals with a small ill-printed tract, ‘A Touch of the Times,’ 1729. But from this date his business diminished, and selling his stock and materials, he went to Barbadoes. There in 1731, at Bridgetown, he published the ‘Barbadoes Gazette,’ the first newspaper in the Caribbee Islands. In 1733 he was bound over for a libel in his paper, but he continued it until the end of 1738. He died soon afterwards. A number of contributions to the ‘Barbadoes Gazette,’ arranged in imitation of the ‘Tatler,’ were printed under the title of ‘Caribbeana, containing Letters and Dissertations, together with Poetical Essays on various subjects and occasions, chiefly wrote by several hands in the West Indies,’ London, 1741, 2 vols. 4to.

Keimer and his oddities, his argumentations, his long beard, his observance of the seventh day as Sabbath, have been immortalised by Franklin (ib. 1874, i. 129–81, &c.). ‘Something of a scholar’ he calls him, but his literary productions were beneath contempt, and his religion of doubtful sincerity.

[I. Thomas's Hist. of Printing in America, Albany, 1874, i. 229–33, 321, ii. 134, 188–9; Memoirs of Hist. Soc. of Pennsylvania, 1826, vol. i.; Notes and Queries, 1st ser. iv. 283, 3rd ser. ix. 95; J. B. McMaster's Benjamin Franklin as a Man of Letters, London, 1887, sm. 8vo; Appleton's Cyclopædia of American Biography, New York, 1887, iii. 502; J. Smith's Biog. Notices of Bradford, Jensen, and Keimer, London, 1891, sm. 8vo; J. Sabin's Cat. of Books relating to America, New York, 1887, ix. 402–3; Duyckinck's Cyclop. of American Literature, 1877, i. 109, 110, 117, 517.] 

KEIR, JAMES (1735–1820), chemist, born on 29 Sept. 1735, was the youngest of the eighteen children of John Keir (1686–1743) of Muiston Baxter and Queenshaugh, Stirlingshire, by Magdalene, eldest daughter of George Lind of Georgie, near Edinburgh. After attending Edinburgh High School, he studied medicine at Edinburgh University, where he formed a lasting friendship with Erasmus Darwin. Having completed his medical studies, he entered the army for the sake of seeing foreign countries, and received his first commission as ensign in the 61st regiment of foot on 1 Oct. 1757. At this period he used to rise at four o'clock in the morning to read the classics and military writers, and he translated many chapters of Polybius. During the seven years' war he was stationed with his regiment in the West Indies. He became lieutenant on 31 March 1759, captain-lieutenant on 16 May 1766, and captain on 23 June of the same year (Army Lists). In the spring of 1768 he resigned his commission, being disappointed at not meeting with more sympathy in his studies from his brother-officers. He found, however, one congenial friend in Alexander Blair, afterwards a captain in the 69th regiment of foot. While in the army Keir wrote a treatise on the art of war, which was accidentally burnt at his publishers, and a pamphlet addressed to the Marquis of Granby in favour of the sale of commissions. Keir ultimately settled at Hill Top, West Bromwich, Staffordshire, and devoted himself to chemistry and geology. In 1775 he commenced business as a glass manufacturer at Stourbridge, near Birmingham. A paper by him ‘On the Crystallisations observed on Glass’ was communicated to the Royal Society by his friend George Fordyce [q. v.], and printed in the ‘Philosophical Transactions’ in 1776. Early in the same year Keir completed his translation of Macquer's ‘Dictionnaire de Chimie,’ with additions and notes, published at London in two quarto volumes. In 1777 he issued a ‘Treatise on the different kinds of Elastic Fluids or Gases’ (new edition, 1779).

Keir had become intimate with Matthew Boulton [q. v.], and in the autumn of 1768 first met James Watt at Boulton's house. Watt wrote of him as ‘a mighty chemist and a very agreeable man’ (, Life of Watt, p. 173). In 1778 Keir gave up his glass business to undertake, in the absence of Boulton and Watt, the sole charge of their engineering works at Soho, Birmingham. He declined, however, the offer of a partnership on account of the financial risk, and limited his connection with the firm to the letter-copying machine department. In 1779 he invented and took out a patent for a metal capable of being forged or wrought when red-hot or cold. It has been said to be almost identical with that now called ‘Muntz-metal.’ About 1780 Keir, in conjunction with Alexander Blair (then retired from the army), established works at Tipton, near Dudley, for the manufacture of alkali from the sulphates of potash and soda, to which he afterwards added a soap manufactory. The method of extraction proceeded on a discovery of Keir's. Priestley came to Birmingham in this year, and found an able assistant in Keir, who had discovered the distinction between carbonic acid gas and atmospheric air previously to, and independently of, Dr. Macbride. Keir was elected F.R.S. on 8 Dec. 1785. With Priestley and Darwin, he was