Excerpt from Dictionary of National Biography, Vol. 50: Russen ScobellRutherford mentions that he had heard of Priestley's researches on the action of plants on mephitic air (p. But makes no other reference to Priestley's work, which he had quite possibly not seen. Neither of the two chemists regarded the gas as an element at this time. Rutherford's comparison of putre faction to slow combustion (p. 24) is inte resting, although Priestley had also previ ously shown the similarity of the two pro cesses.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.