Phillips on the Oil Question. 33S 



be heated to the temperature of about 600° of Fahrenheit." So 

 that according to these careful corroborating experiments, " the 

 true results" are that the vapour of oil at 600° is not inflam- 

 mable, and is inflammable, and at 610° extinguishes flame. Al- 

 though I am heartily tired, I cannot help adding one more 

 example of your agreement in opinion with yourself. Al- 

 luding to the forcible expulsion of the oil, described by the 

 Associates, you say (Observations, p. 342,) "I cannot conceive 

 how the expansion of the vapour could throw out the oil ; for, 

 if the vessel could not hold the vapour and the oil, the natural 

 consequence would have been for the vapour to escape through 

 the tube and not the oil." In the Reply (p. 92) we are in- 

 formed that " this vacuity [in the boiler] would be filled with 

 vapour, in consequence of the large quantity of water which 

 is always formed in oil at a high temperature; and this being 

 generated faster than it could be carried off by the tube, 

 would press with a force on tlie surface of the oil, that would 

 be sufficient to produce all the effects which they have re- 

 lated;" that is, to drive the oil out of the boiler. 



In concluding these remarks, I ask the public to consider 

 what reliance can be placed either upon your own experi- 

 ments, or upon the representations which you have made 

 respecting the experiments of others ; what reliance, I ask 

 with confidence, can be placed upon a man, who, pretending 

 to give an impartial account of the evidence offered during an 

 important trial, suppresses the evidence of two gentlemen out 

 of three who spoke to one particulaa: point, because two out of 

 the three differed from him in opinion ; who took advantage of 

 a misprint in the trial, to misrepresent the opinion of a jury- 

 man, and even suppresses one half of what that juryman said; 

 who states that two calculations of the capacity of a boiler, 

 are erroneous, which are clearly correct; who says that oil 

 does not give out inflammable vapour without depositing char- 

 coal, and without being heated beyond what our thermo- 

 meters will measure, and yet, when he is told of these facts, 

 denies that any new experiment is stated ; who suppresses 

 repeated evidcnco as to the quantity of oil which a boiler 



