Diary of John Quincy Adams, volume 2
Snow'd part of the day. Reading Watson's chemical essays.1 They are written in a very plain intelligible manner, and are quite entertaining. The subject I have never before paid any great attention to. We pass'd the evening at the professor's. Small conversation, with women, can be interesting, only at the time it is going forward.
Richard Watson, Chemical Essays, 3d edn., 3 vols., London, 1784 (Harvard, Catalogus Bibliothecae, 1790, p. 37). There is a four-volume set of this 3d edn., London, 1784–1786, among JA's books (MB).