—_ to a Criticism of eet Olmsted. 51 
sed to adopt the views of Sir Humphrey Davy, [ cannot but 
think that Dr. Hare has here suggested an answer which is not 
altogether unobjectionable. The application of his rule or test, 
makes it necessary to suppose, that the particles subjected to she 
pact, are all moving in the same direction—that they ail actually 
come into heer each upon neach, si that they are non elastic ; 
moti 
diotea ti have fully and clearly refuted the eel thesis of Sir 
Humphrey, his arguaient is still imperfect, for it by no means @s-. 
tablishes the doctrine of the materiality of heat, to prove that Da- 
vy has failed of showing that it is a product of motion. Both par- 
ties, in my view, evince how idle it is to reason respecting chemi- 
cal phenomena upon mechanical principles.” 
r “idle” it may be to advance mechanical 
ples as the means of explaining the phenomena of C nenatry, 
Tassert that, when mechanical principles have been brought 
forward as the means of explanation, it is not idle to show 
the explanation thus founded inconsistent with its own pre- 
mises. 
Though I might have a in applying to the reason- 
ings of so great a man as Sir H. Davy, the epithet employed 
by Prof. Olmsted, I chalets him to point out in my essay 
any word which tends to show, that I do not think’ i it idle to 
employ mechanical principles in reasonings on try. 
We concur in disapproving of the hypothesis of Sir Hum- 
phrey Davy, but because I have met it with arguments upon 
its own basis, instead of briefly pein it, Prof. Olmsted 
accuses me, mo jess than the illustri uting 
chemical science, with mechanical reasonin 
if reasonings be idle, let the great Enelish Chemist, 
who introduced them, bear the weight of Prof. Olmsted’s ani- 
madversion. Besides erroneously holding me up as the 
friend of a method of reasoning, of which I am really the an-- 
tagonist, the criticisms of Prof. Olmsted would convey to any 
person, who had not read my essay, an impression that I had 
