SKETCH OF ROBERT HARE. 695 



all the gods they knew to follow instanter, as some one had died 

 and they might be accused of bewitching. The doctor followed, 

 nothing loath to get on the road so easily. 



The magician, when answering questions, shakes his gourd 

 and examines the claws, teeth, and pebbles it contains.* From 

 these he receives his oracles, and according to their position his 

 answers are satisfactory or the reverse, but generally shrewd ad- 

 vice if somewhat ambiguous. It is they who prepare war medi- 

 cine and doctor soldiers for the field ; they, too, prepare the poison 

 bowl and administer it to those who are to be tried by that means. 

 At births, deaths, and marriages they are in constant attendance, 

 and, while the chief derives his revenue largely from voluntary 

 gifts, the magicians receive fees which are rigidly exacted. — 

 Journal of the Anthropological Institute. 



SKETCH OF ROBERT HARE. 



THE name of Robert Hare, said the American Journal of Sci- 

 ence at the time of his death, "has for more than half a 

 century been familiar to men of science as a chemical philoso- 

 pher, and to the cultivators of the useful arts throughout the 

 civilized world." Dr. Hare was born in Philadelphia, January 

 17, 1781, and died in the same place, May 15, 1858. His father, 

 the proprietor of a large brewery in Philadelphia, was an Eng- 

 lishman of strong mind, occupying a prominent position in so- 

 ciety, and enjoying the confidence of his fellow-citizens. The 

 management of this concern shortly fell into the hands of the 

 son. He was soon drawn away from it, however, by the strength 

 of his predilection for scientific pursuits ; and before he was 

 twenty years old he was enrolled as an attendant of the course of 

 lectures on chemistry and physics in Philadelphia, and became a 

 member of the Chemical Society of that city. There he found 

 Priestley, Sybert, and Woodhouse among his associates. To this 

 society he communicated in 1801 a description of the oxyhydro- 

 gen blowpipe, which was then called the hydrostatic blowpipe, 

 and which Prof. Silliman, who had been engaged with him in 

 1802 and 1803 in a series of experiments with the instrument, 

 afterward called the compound blowpipe. On his return from 

 Philadelphia, in 1803, Prof. Silliman constructed for Yale College 

 the first pneumatic trough combining Dr. Hare's invention; an 

 apparatus which was afterward figured and described by Dr. Hare 

 in his memoir on the Fusion of Strontia and the Volatilization of 

 Platinum — a paper which was republished in London and in the 



* Auyasa, Yao, Mauganga, Wanasomba, etc. 



