BAUME, Antoine, a French chemist, distinguished for his success in the practical application of the science, was born at Senlis in 1728. He was the son of an innkeeper, and had to contend with the disadvantages of a defective education, in spite of which he prosecuted his scientific researches with great success. He w as apprenticed to the celebrated chemist Geoffroy, and in 1752 was admitted a member of the college of pharmacy; soon after he was appointed professor of chemistry at that establishment. He carried on a commercial establishment in Paris for the preparation, on an extensive scale, of drugs for medicine and the arts, such as the acetate of lead, the muriate of tin, mercurial salts, and antimonial preparations. At the same time he published a number of papers on chemical science, and on arts and manufactures. He established the first manufactory of sal-ammoniac in France, a substance which before that time had been obtained from Egypt. He was the first also who devised and set on foot a process for bleaching raw silk. Having acquired a competency by the success of these different undertakings, he retired from trade, and devoted his time to the application of chemistry to the arts. He improved the process for dyeing scarlet at the manufactory of the Gobelins, and announced a cheap process for purifying saltpetre. By the Revolution he lost his fortune, but this calamity, instead of disheartening him, stimulated him to resume his trade. He was chosen a correspondent of the Institute in 1796, and died in 1804, at the age of seventy-six. Many of his papers are published in the Memoirs of the Academy of Sciences. Of his separate publications, the following may be mentioned here: Dissertation sur ΓEther, in 12mo; Plan d'un Cours de Chimie Expérimentale, 1757, in ...