"The cause of the increased weight that certain metals experience by calcination, has, at all times, been a subject of speculation and research with chemists and natural philosophers. Cardan, Cæsalpin, Libavius, and many others, formerly endeavoured to explain this phænomenon; but amongst them all, we must, in justice, distinguish John Rey, a physician of Perigord, who lived at the beginning of the last century. His work, perhaps unknown to all the chemists and naturalists of the present day, appears the more deserving to be rescued from oblivion, because the reason which he assigns for the increased weight of the calces of and tin, has an immediate relation with that, which is on the point of being acknowledged by all chemists."