on the Oil Question. 97 



tention to the management of experiments to be conducted at a 

 distance from our own laboratories, which would require several 

 "weeks for their completion. 



3d. Because, when this proposal was offered, we had made 

 a number of experiments ourselves, and these were sufficient to 

 satisfy us that no danger arose from the oil apparatus ; and, 

 therefore, as the question in our minds admitted of no doubt, 

 we felt no inclination to waste our time in witnessing any ex- 

 periments which the opposite chemists might think fit to in- 

 stitute. And above all, 



4th. Because no results which we could possibly have wit- 

 nessed at their place, in opposition to the evidence of our own 

 senses, could have overturned, or even shaken ouv confidence 

 in, those which had been obtained by our own apparatus — by 

 our own oil — and in our own laboratories. 



When several months had elapsed, another invitation was 

 sent to some of the gentlemen consulted by the plaintiffs to meet 

 several gentlemen at Bromley, on the part of the defendants, 

 " for the purpose of ascertaining results from oil which had 

 then been under the process of heating for a considerable time 

 past." When I received this invitation 1 felt inclined to accede 

 to the proposal, and I wrote to the defendant's solicitors to say 

 that I would attend ; but when I found that several of the 

 chemical gentieu\en who were acting for Messrs. Severn and Go., 

 were of opinion that it would be absurd and useless to go to 

 witness the latter end of a long experiment, and become a party 

 to a process which had been commenced, and for a long time 

 conducted without our superintendence or control, I thought it 

 necessary to decline the invitation. And I was more especially 

 induced to come to this determination, when 1 learned that some 

 of my chemical friends considered these invitations as part of a 

 dexterous piece of management, by which it would have been 

 attempted on the day of trial to shew, that these experiments 

 were in fact ours, and thus have added weight to them with 

 the court and jury, by an appearance of our having sanctioned 

 the way in which they were conducted. So much for this accusa- 

 tion, which is urged and re-urged in various parts of the l»ook. 



Vol. XI. 11 



