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June 25, 1838. 
SIR Wm. R. HAMILTON, A.M., President, in the Chair. 
Dr. Apjohn made some remarks upon the subject of the 
Specific Heats of Gases. 
The author stated that he had received, some months 
since, a memoir on the subject of the specific heats of 
gases, by M. Suerman, an eminent Dutch philosopher; upon 
examining which, he was not a little surprised to find that the 
method of the author was identically the same with that which 
he had himself employed, in a paper on the same subject, 
which has appeared in the last volume of the Transactions 
of the Academy. The following passage of M. Suerman’s 
preface, however, completely removed his apprehensions of 
having been anticipated—‘‘ Tandem opus aggressus, et oc- 
cupatus in idonea paranda supellectili diarium accepi Angli- 
cum, quo in collegio, quod Dublini habetur, Chemiz Profes- 
soris Apjohn continebatur disquisitio, ex eodem illa principio 
fluidorum elasticorum calorem specificum derivans. Pri- 
mum,—quid sileam?—animo despondebam quum novitatis 
colorem que mihi precipue arridebat, de meo evanescere 
viderem proposito.” 
This passage, he stated, he had been long anxious to 
bring before the Academy, lest, when Suerman’s Thesis came 
to be noticed in the British journals, any Member of the 
Academy should suppose that he had borrowed his method 
from the learned Dutchman, and had done so without 
acknowledgment. 
Dr. Apjohn then proceeded to remark upon some points, 
in reference to which he considered himself as having 
been misapprehended by M. Suerman. Thus he is repre- 
sented in the following passage, as adopting an erroneous 
method of estimating the caloric of elasticity of aqueous 
vapour. “ In computando vero formulam quam a claro Gay- 
