292 ^^P^y '" ^^^' -Allan's Ohservat'ions [April, 



Or am I the garbling and interpolating critic, and Mr. Allan the 

 unfortunate author? Perhaps this is bis mcatiing. If so, few read- 

 ers will, i believe, be of opinion that the first two epithets are 

 well applied, whatever they may think of the third, 



Mr. Allan intended at one time, it seems, " to have overlooked 

 me entirely. A most prudent resolution certainly, and one which 

 every wise man will not only form, but adhere to, whenever he 

 finds himself pressed by an unanswerable argument. He says his 

 paper was not " in the slightest degree shaken by my observations," 

 But 1 think I have proved that it was shaken, yea, shaken to very 

 tatters ; and that nothing he has advanced in answer to me has 

 been able to put it to rights again. 



He says that 1 have " charged him with wilful misconception, 

 with ignorance and presumption ; language w hich w ill produce a 

 very different effect from that intended by the writer." The fact 

 is that the writer intended to produce no efiiect w hatever, except 

 to shew that Mr. Allan, like many other philosophers before him, 

 had fallen into mistakes, mis-quoted authors, (remember 1 never 

 said wilfully), and drawn hasty or erroneous conclusions. This I 

 hope was not too much. I do not suppose Mr, Allan disputes the 

 truth of the common adage, Hiimanum est errare. He wrongs 

 me by saying I charge him with " wilful misconception," I only 

 charge him with inaccuracy or mis-statement, meaning by the 

 latter term not wilful mis-Ptatement, or I should have said so, (for 

 I believe, according to the best authorities, the term does not neces- 

 ^rily imply wilfulness), but mis-statement from inadvertency, or 

 a most from prejudice. And the politest disputants, 1 think, rea- 

 dily represent their opponents as under the influence of this delu- 

 sion, without its being deemed offensive. As to ignorance, the 

 ierm certainly does not once occur in the course of my paper ; but 

 DO doubt every man who attempts to prove that another has rea- 

 soned incorrectly, or is anyhow in an error, so far charges him with 

 ignorance. With respect to presumption, though that term is not 

 mentioned neither, yet I must in some measure plead guilty, for I 

 isaid I should have been better pleased with Mr. Allan's paper if it 

 had been written in a less assuming tone, by which I meant no 

 more than to state, that I thought his style too confident, when 

 dbputing against a man who is allowed by all, even by Mr, Allan 

 himself, to be in a great measure, the father of the science of 

 mineralogy, 



Mr, Allan complains of the unpleasantness of his task in " being 

 forced to detect the inconsistencies and contradictions" of Professor 

 Jameson. But I trust 1 have made it sufhciently appear, in a 

 former part of this letter, that he might have spared himself that 

 trouble, as the inconsistencies and contradictions which he attri- 

 butes to the Piofessor, exist only in his own misapprehension. He 

 uses these words : — " It is by no means a pleasing task to me to 

 be forced to detect the inconsistencies and contradictions of any one, 

 far less those of a gectleman who I believe has exerted himself, as 



