"He was not ignorant of the work of Lavoisier, and acknowledged frankly that the latter's views would explain the results of his experiments "nearly as well," but after weighing both opinions he clung to the old for what now seems a curious reason. He writes: "There is one circumstance also, which though it may appear to many not to have much force, I own has some weight with me; it is, that as plants seem to draw their nourishment almost entirely from water and fixed and phlogisticated air, and are restored back to those substances by burning, it seems reasonable to conclude, that notwithstanding their infinite variety they consist almost entirely of various combinations of water and fixed and phlogisticated air, united according to one of these opinions to phlogiston, and deprived according to the other of dephlogisticated air; so that, according to the latter opinion, the substance of a plant is less compounded than a mixture of those bodies into which it is resolved by burning; and it is more reasonable to look for great variety in the more compound than in the more simple substance.""
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A History of Chemistry (Moore)
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