On the Discovery of Fluoric Acid in the Condrodite. 357 
correct these statements, and the more especially, as it 
will be done with the aid of facts that are — in the 
history of the mineral in question. 
Mr. Nuttall says, “ If lam called upon, as you are aware, 
by Mr. H. Seybert to say when and where, I had heard of 
the existence of Fluoric acid in the Brucite or Condrodite, 
I might refer him back to a period when he was too young 
to have been acquainted with even the name of Chemis- 
try.”* J put no such questions to that gentleman: on a 
former occasion he told us, that “the condrodite, or Bru- 
cite, almost peculiar to Sparta, discovered likewise by the 
celebrated Berzelius, in Finland, accompanied by gray 
Spinelle is (according to an unpublished analysis which I 
made in 1820,) a Silicate of Magnesia with an accidental 
portion of Fluoric acid and Iron.”t Mr. Nuttall did not 
then refer to any analysis made prior to that which he pre- 
tended to have made ; my protest was therefore directly 
— his being the discoverer of the fluoric acid in this 
ne From the fact containéd in my letter, above re- 
ferred to, Mr. N uttall, as far as concerns himself, has been 
obliged to renounce every pretension, heretofore made b 
him, on that subject. Mr. Nuttall seems still disposed to 
believe, that the fluoric acid in this mineral is an accidental 
ingredient, and he attributes its presence to “the contiguity 
of slender veins of fluate of lime to the masses of condrodite 
or Brucite near to oa "eye The fact, 
however, is that Sparta is six miles distant from Franklin 
furnace, and I do not big "thet any one has hitherto an- 
nounced that fluate of lime, lies contiguous to the carbonate 
of lime in which the Maclureite at Sparta is imbedded. I 
found none of it when I examined that locality. What in- 
fluence the fluate of lime, at Franklin furnace, may have 
had in the composition of the Sparta mineral, I must leave 
to be determined by those who are more disposed than J 
am, to speculate on this subject. Again, if fluate of lime 
had been found contiguous to the Maclureite of ‘Sparta, what 
chemist would pretend, that the magnesia in the latter 
*See Journal of Science and Arts, Vol. VI. p. 171. 
tIbid, Vol. V. p. 245. 
Hbid, Vol. VI. p, 172. 
