346 On the Chemical Evidence 



that he believed those facts were quite new to all the parties 

 present, and to chemists in general ; and on being asked if he 

 thought the new process a more hazardous operation than the 

 old mode of boiling sugar, he replied, " I think no person could 

 view the experiment in Whitecross-street, without seeing it was 

 an agent of extreme activity and danger.'* 



Observations. — From the undoubted respectability of this 

 gentleman, and also of the others who were engaged on the 

 same side of the question, one can have no hesitation in believ- 

 ing that they all faithfully reported what they saw ; but when 

 we compare the degrees of temperature at which the several ap- 

 pearances took place, with the temperatures at which similar 

 phsenomena occurred in the experiments of the Plaintiffs' che- 

 mical witnesses, we are naturally led to search for some satis- 

 factory explanation of these contradictory results. I know the 

 care with which I made my own experiments, and how the se- 

 veral experiments which were performed by different means, 

 corroborated one another ; I am therefore satisfied that the re- 

 sults which I obtained were the true results, and that there 

 must have been some source of error in the manipulations of 

 our opponents which have escaped their notice. It has occurred 

 to me, that as whale-oil often goes through several hands, be- 

 fore it comes to the consumer, and as different dealers have dif- 

 ferent modes of refining it, that there may have been something 

 in the oil which there ought not to have been ; or it may pos- 

 sibly be attributable to the thermometer, which from the circum- 

 stance of its being an open one, is not so improbable as it other- 

 wise would have been. I do hope, however, that the gentleman 

 who instituted this public experiment, as it has been called, will 

 investigate the matter thoroughly, for the credit of all of us. 

 Instead of '* a state like pitch," Dr. Bostock must have meant, 

 a state like tar. All he intended was, as I conceive, to describe 

 the oil which had been long heated, as a black and viscid sub- 

 stance. I have only one other observation to make respecting 

 Dr. Bostock's evidence, viz., that from the effect which the ac- 

 cident in Whitecross-street had upon the Doctor's mind, I 



