1826.] lo Dr. Ure's Review. 7 



chemical knowledge. Abundance of new combinations of ele- 

 mentary bodies indeed still remain unknown ; but hydrogen, 

 from its peculiar quahties, is less likely to admit of our uniting 

 it to elementary bodies in general than oxygen, or any other 

 chemical body whatever. The only observation of the reviewer 

 upon this subject which has any force is borrowed from Dr. 

 Prout, and borrowed too as usual without acknowledgment. 



5. By far the longest and most elaborate part of the review, 

 and what was intended to constitute the grand display of the 

 knowledge and sagacity of the reviewei", is the attack upon the 

 third chapter of my work. It occupies eight pages, and was 

 viewed by the author with much self-complacency, Vv'hat 

 betrays the cloven foot of the reviewer is the qualification with 

 which he takes care to guard every observation. He admits the 

 truth of all my conclusions, satisfying himself with denying the 

 validity of all the premises. Now as the opinions which I have 

 advanced in my third chapter, though at present pretty generally 

 admitted, were, when I first gave them to the public in the 

 Annals of Philosophy, almost universally opposed, and by none 

 with more violence than by the author of the review ; it is 

 certainly a most extraordinary accident, to say the least of it, 

 that should have led me to right conclusions from inaccurate 

 experiments and delusive reasoning. 



For a full refutation of every thing contained in this redoubt- 

 able part of the review, I refer the reader to my answer to Mr. 

 Rainy, inserted in the Annals of Philosophy for November last, 

 and to my account of th«.' analysis of sulphate of zinc printed in 

 the same number of that journal. It will be seen there that I 

 committed no mistake in my calculation, and that the experi- 

 ments were as near the truth as the most minute attention to 

 accuracy could enable me to go. The mistakes belong to the 

 author of the review, who left out of view a most important 

 part of the data, the boiling point of the acid which I employed. 



It was fortunate for the reviewer that this answer of mine did 

 not make its appearance till after the publication of the review. 

 It might have obliged him to have cancelled the most imposing 

 part of his essay, which would have obliterated a whole budget 

 of witticisms and repartees upon which I had been told that^he 

 valued himself not a little. He even boasted, it is said, to some 

 of the few individuals in Glasgow who still condescend to asso- 

 ciate with him, that he woulddemolish all my five years' labours 

 in five minutes. 



The witty remarks upon the capacity of the flask which I 

 employed for dissolving the zinc in my experiments to determine 

 the specific gravity of hydrogen gas, are upon tlie whole the most 

 passable in the review. I have some thoughts, therefore, of 

 sending the flask to the managers of the Andersonian Institu- 

 tion, that they may place it ia their museum with a suitable 



