and Life by Dr. Kippis; Chandler's Life of King David; Colin Milne's Botanical Dictionary, Botanic Dialogues, and other books of Natural History; Kirwan's Analysis of Mineral Waters; Crosby's History of English Baptists.
In one of his letters he observed—
A person must be in my situation ... to judge of my feelings when I receive new books.
Strangely enough a box of books was sent him to Carlisle (Pa.) and had been there for two years before he learned of it.
Perhaps a word more may be allowed in regard to the paper on Pestilential Disorders by Noah Webster. This was the lexicographer. Priestley thought the work curious and important, but the philosophy in it wild and absurd in the extreme. And of Rush he asks—
Pray is he (Webster) a believer in revelation or not? I find several atheists catch at everything favourable to the doctrine of equivocal generation; but it must be reprobated by all who are not.
Chemists will be glad to hear that
The annual expense of my laboratory will hardly exceed 50 pounds, and I think I may have done more in proportion to my expenses than any other man. What I have done here, and with little expense, will in time be thought very considerable; but on account of the almost universal reception of the new theory, what I do is not, at present, attended to; but Mr. Watt and Mr. Kier, as good chemists as any in Europe, approve of my tract on Phlogiston, and truth will in time prevail over any error.
And to another he said,