On the Gas Bloupipe. 229 



attended to the subject, will demoiistrafe the impressions of tlie 

 author of that work, as the results of my experiments which I had 

 published are there quoted solely on my authority. 



The memoir of Professor Silliman, read before the Connecticut 

 Academy of Sciences, May 1812, and republished in Tiiloch's 

 Magazine, but which Dr. Clark has not ventured to notice, af- 

 fords the most unanswerable evidence that we had anticipated 

 him in almost everv important exj)eriment. 



Mr. Reuben Haines, corresponding secretary of the Academy of 

 Sciences, informed me in IS 13, that in the laboratory of Dr. 

 Parish in this citv, a mixture of the gaseous elements of water had 

 been inflamed while issuing in a stream from a punctured bladder 

 previously filled with them and duly compressed. Any relaxa- 

 tion of the pressure was of course productive of an explosion. 

 He on the other hand recollects, that at that time I proposed this 

 mode of supplying the blowpipe, interposing a small receptacle 

 (like a water valve) between the reservoir and the place of exit. 

 Cares more imperious prevented the execution of a plan which 

 did not promise to be better than that I had before pursued suc- 

 cessfully. 



Some time afterwards, Sir Humphry Davy's discovery of the 

 influence of narrow metallic apertures in impeding explosions, 

 encouraged Dr. Clark and others to hazard the use of a mixed 

 stream of hydrogen and oxygen gas, ignited while flowing from 

 a common recipient, instead of allowing them, as I had done, to 

 mix only during their efflux. Tliere is another immaterial dif- 

 ference in the modes of operating. In mine, hydrostatic pressure 

 is emploved to expel the gases from a vessel into which they are 

 introduced, as generated, or by means of a bellows. In tlie new 

 mode, being pumped into the recipient by one aperture, they 

 flowed out at another in consecjucnce of their elasticity. 



Dr. Clark pretends that the process he has en)i)loyed is the 

 best. Admitting this, would it afford him any excuse for taking 

 so little notice of mine, or attriinitiiig the discovery of it to others, 

 especially while professing to give a J air Idsloiij of the inven- 

 tion r 



If I may Ije allowed to compare small things with great, when 

 Mr. Cruikshank and Sir H. Davy improved the galvanic appa- 

 ratus by- introducing the trougli, or modifying and enlarging it, 

 did they on that account forget that Volta was tlio invent(;r of 

 the pile ? was it not still (though no longer a pile) called the 

 Voltaic a|)paratus ? 



Dr. Clark, like many others of the same character, finding that^ 

 lie caimot prove himself and his associates to have the merit of 

 oiiginality, endeavours to deprive the real author of it, and ac- 

 /•(irdinglv'ascriiies it to Lavoisier. Had this been stated in hii 



Vol. 37. No. 277. May KSlJl. 'J' t fir^t 



