44 Remarks on an Article entitled " ji feia Facts 



oil or coal) through the heated medium before condensation *, 

 certainly we have that proof now before us in the essay in ques- 

 tion, which admits the very existence of oil gas to depend upon it. 

 The following paragraph your readers will no doubt think with 

 me is very objectionable, in as much as it does not agree with the 

 venerable proverb of" Honour to whom honour, merit to wliom 

 merit is due." It states that " about two years since it occurred 

 to Messrs. John and Philip Taylor, that it might be practicable 

 to construct an apparatus capable of converting oil into gas." 

 *' In theory the project appeared easy," &c. I am sure the in- 

 genious Messrs. Taylors, who move in the highest circle of civil- 

 engineering, would have been more ingenuous and civil, than to 

 have thus passed by the prior labours of Dr. Henrv, who, not only 

 tiuo years ago, hvil, fourteen years ago, laid before the public his 

 *' Experiments on the Gases obtained by the destructive Distillation 

 of Wood, Peat, Pic-coal, Oil, Wax, ivc. with a view to the Theory 

 of their Combustion, when employed as Sources of artificial 

 Light." The first memoir appeared in Nicholson's Journal for 

 June 1S05. The second in the Transactions of the Royal So- 

 ciety for I SOS I ! In reply to this I shall onlv quote Nelson's 

 niotto, " Palmam qui meruit ferat^" and say, that though fifty 



* I certainly feel no small degree of pleasure to think that the page? of 

 The Philosoplrical Magazine for April and Xovcmher ISIS should bear the 

 prior record of this my favourite svstem, which for two years I have been 

 making almost numberless experiments upon ; and indeed, the more I see of 

 its action, both on the largo and small Fcale, the more I am convinced that 

 it must prevail i\nd become general. Those who stiil doubt that by it a 

 much greater per ccntage of olefiant gas as well as earburetted hydrogen 

 is produced from a given quantity of coal, \\\\\ do well to visit the gas estii- 

 blishments at either Biwh or Cheltenliaui, tiic brilliancy and purity of the 

 gas at which places are becoming quite proverbial. Mr. Manby of the Horse- 

 ley Iron Works was, 1 believe, the engineer employed in each of the above- 

 mentioned towns, and with whom the idea of the heated medium occurred at 

 much about the same time as with Mr. Parker of Liverpool and myself. 

 Mr. M. informs me that at Batli, eight retorts wltlt the heated laMium elicit 

 more and better gas, than twelve retorts did prior to its adoption, the re- 

 torts in each instance being charged alike! I mention this, in order to show 

 that it must have been from the want of heated surfaces, that Dr. Thomson 

 in his truly valuable " E.xperinients to determine th« composition of the 

 diflerent species of pit-coal," did not succeed in obtaining good gas from 

 coal tar. He says that the gas obtained " yielded too little light to make 

 it worth while to prosf^cuto such experiments further." 'Whereas in my 

 own apparatus we daily decompose the tar, and produce a light from it 

 equal in brilliancy to any oil gas ! To the truth of this many scientific 

 friends can bear witness, the retort being so constructed as to serve for the 

 decomposition of either coal, coal-tar, oil, tallow, or kitchen grease ; on the 

 former of which numbers of analytical experiments enable me to state, that 

 there are yet many curious phretiomcna to be developed, besides those 

 which I published in No. 252 of The Philosophical Magazine. 



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