Mr. R. Phillips's L€ttei- to Dr. D. Boswell Reid. 421 



offer you my congratulations on the appearance of the se- 

 cond and greatly improved edition of the "Elements of Prac- 

 tical Chemistry ;" 1 say greatly improved, for I find that 

 about fifty statements in the first edition, to which I objected, 

 have been altered, and most of them corrected, in the second. 

 Under these circumstances, and considering how much you 

 have benefited by my observations, I presume you will not 

 again describe me as a "totally and grossly ignorant" person. 

 I assure you, however, that 1 claim no credit for sagacity 

 in performing this exposure of your errors, for they lay upon 

 the surface, and he only could be inadequate to detect, who 

 was capable of committing them. 



You complain in the Continuation, that I have not met your 

 charges ol" misrepresentation, nor shall I do so on the present 

 occasion ; for I consider them no more worthy of reply than 

 the low invective in which you have so freely indulged; and 

 I shall allow both quietly to repose with such assertions, as 

 that I do not understand an experiment made by Dr. Priestley, 

 and that I state the acid which he employed in it to have been 

 diluted with water. [Continuation, p. 7.) 



I shall now confine myself as much as possible to the results 

 of experiments, leaving you, widiout further objection, to trans- 

 late liqueur oxigenee nitrique, by oxigenated nitric acid ; — to 

 make a third erroneous statement of the weight of a wine pint 

 of water; — to recommend an apparatus in p. 137 of the Ele- 

 ments, and to condemn it in p. 8 of the Exposure. 



Now, Sir, to experiments; and I think you will feel com- 

 pelled to repeat those which 1 am going to detail, and to dis- 

 prove or to admit their accuracy; unless, indeed, you are sa- 

 tisfied that your assertions, unsupported by evidence, are more 

 likely to meet with assent than my opinions deduced from ob- 

 servation. 



The subject which I shall first notice occurs in p. 10 of the 

 Continuation, in which you still maintain that there is some 

 peculiarity in the action of nitric acid of sp. gr. 1*48, and that 

 1 was ignorant of the fact. I admit indeed my ignorance of 

 it, and for the best of reasons, which is, that it does not exist. 

 I was indeed aware that some authors had made erroneous 

 statements respecting it, which have been copied by you ; and 

 in the second edition o{ the Elements, you have merely modified 

 the errors instead of correcting them. You now say, [Elements, 

 p. 60,) "Antimony has less action with nitric acid of the den- 

 sity r48, than when it is either a little stronger or a httle 

 weaker." You have, however, incorrectly stated the facts of the 

 case. I have shown in my Letter (p. 15) that a small quantity 

 of antimony acts indeed immediately upon acid of r.3()7, while 



upon 



