Antoine Baume, a French apothecary and chemist, born at Senlis, Feb. 26, 1728, died Oct. 15, 1804. He was the son of an innkeeper, and received an imperfect education; but he was apprenticed to the chemist Geoffroy, and was highly successful in scientific researches. At the age of 24 (1752) he was made a member of the college of pharmacy, Paris, and was soon after appointed professor of chemistry. He established a manufactory for the preparation of acetate of lead, muriate of tin, mercurial salts, antimonial preparations, and other articles for medicine and the arts, and manufactured for the first time in France sal ammoniac, previously imported from Egypt. He invented a process for bleaching raw silks, devised a cheap method of purifying saltpetre, improved the process for dyeing scarlet in the Gobelins manufactory, and made improvements in the manufacture of porcelain and in the areometer, constructing for the latter a scale which is still in use. Acquiring a competence, he abandoned manufacturing and de-' voted himself to the application of chemistry to the arts.

He was a member of the academy of sciences (1773), and a correspon-dmt of the institute (1796). His works are: Dissertation sur l'ether, and Plan d'un cours de chimie experimentale (12mo, Paris, 1757); Opuscules de chimie (8vo, 1798); Elements de pharmacie theorique et pratique (2 vols. 8vo, 1762, and later editions, 1769, 1773, and 1818); Chimie experimentale et raisonnee (3 vols. 8vo, 1773); and several papers in the Memoires of the academy of sciences, and in the Diction-naire des arts et metiers.