BRISSET. Gravities of Metals, a subject which, in all its extent, occupied a great portion of his attention during twenty years of his life. The results of his experiments on a great variety of substances were collected into a single volume of Tables of Specific Gravities, which was published in 1787. It was principally for the use of the students who attended his lectures that he published his Traité de Physique and his Dictionnaire, both of them containing elementary and popular information, rather calculated exclusively for the immediate purpose which they were intended to serve, than for being of permanent utility in the promotion of the sciences. At a late period of his life he renewed his attention to the subject of chemistry, when the discoveries of his junior contemporaries had given greater certainty and precision to its laws; and his last work was an Elementary Treatise on that science, intended for the use of his pupils in the central school. (T. X.)