Such a service to science, and humanity, was rendered by Darwin; a like service was done, more than three-quarters of a century before Darwin, by Lavoisier.
Antoine Laurent Lavoisier was born in Paris in 1743.

His father, who was a merchant in a good position, gave his son the best education which was then possible, in physical, astronomical, botanical, and chemical science.

At the age of twenty-one, Lavoisier gained the prize offered by the Government for devising an effective and economical method of lighting the public streets.

From that time until, on the 8th of May 1794, the Government of the Revolution declared, "The Republic has no need of men of science," and the guillotine ended his life, Lavoisier continued his researches in chemistry, geology, physics, and other branches of natural science, and his investigations into the most suitable methods of using the knowledge gained by naturalists for advancing the welfare of the community.
In Chapter VI., I said that when an alchemist boiled water in an open vessel, and obtained a white earthy solid, in place of the water which disappeared, he was producing some sort of experimental proof of the justness of his assertion that water can be changed into earth.
Lavoisier began his work on the transformations of matter by demonstrating that this alleged transmutation does not happen; and he did this by weighing the water, the vessel, and the earthy solid.
Lavoisier had constructed for him a pelican of white glass (see Fig.
XI., p.

88), with a stopper of glass.