120 Mr. Hunt's Reply to Prof. Draper's Letter. 



indebted to him than I have allowed. I am not aware that he 

 has devised a sinirje photographic process; I cannot discover 

 that he has even improved one. 



Dr. Draper's inquiries into the condition of the solar rays 

 have been extensive, and these are distinctly noticed in tfie 

 *' Researches." I am now, in justice to myself and others, 

 compelled to state that I avoided any reference to Dr. Draper's 

 paper on Tithonographic Spectra, published in one of your 

 journals, to which I cannot at this moment refer, because 

 nearly the whole of the prismatic analyses therein described 

 had been long previously published by Sir John Herschel in 

 the Transactions of the Royal Society, with which memoir 

 Dr. Draper was evidently' familiar, but which he avoided men- 

 tioning. Sonie other of the "nine-tenths" of the '■^facts^* 

 published by Dr. Draper, which he says "are not so much as 

 alluded to," are in the same position as the above ; and having 

 in your Journal shown the doubtful character of the rest, 

 and the absurdity of the Professor's conclusions*, I leave it 

 for your readers to decide whether I have not chosen the 

 safest course in omitting them, when their insertion would have 

 tended to involve an intricate subject in error. 



Dr. Draper claims for himself the discovery "of a fourth 

 imponderable," and then continues, " Yet Mr. Hunt, in this 

 book, actually appropriates it to himself, and gives the fourth 

 imponderable the name of Eneugia." Now if your readers, 

 instead of commencing their perusal at "that chapter wliich 

 commences on the 259th page," will begin at the 243rd page, 

 I think they will find I have given Dr. Draper credit for all 

 that he has done. I am not inclined to dispute "the right of 

 proprietorship over that capital fact," although I can prove that 

 previously to 1842 I suggested, in lectures at the Polytechnic 

 Hall, the probability of the discovery of a new element in the 

 solar rays. Dr. Draper has done no more. I think the fol- 

 lowing passages will show no desire on my part to appropriate 

 the ideas of others. 



" Sir John Herschel admits the three classes of phaenomena 

 to be distinct from each other, and all the researches of Bec- 

 querel, of Moser, of Draper and others have led to the same 

 conclusion. 



•^ ^ -jf. -^ -^ 



" Dr, Draper, as I have previously mentio7ied, has pioposed 

 a name which is so purely imaginary and inexpressive that it 

 can nexm be generally adopted T — Researches, p. 266. 



Dr. Draper has proposed tithonicity as the name for this 

 suspected element, from some fancied analogy between the 



* Phil. Mag., April 184.3, p. 270. In this paper it will be seen that 

 due credit is given to Dr. Draper for all iiis tithonic researches. 



