"The apparatus employed, though deficient in delicacy according to modern standards, was unexceptionable in principle, and wherever... possible, was made to yield quantitative results, so that this earliest analyst of the gases introduced the principle of rendering all descriptions of phenomena as precise as possible, and endeavoured... to attach a numerical value to each. We... have done little more in later times than extend, improve, and... perfect Cavendish's processes for the analysis of gases, and that we differ from him more in our mode of interpreting certain of the phenomena... than we do in our methods..."