

18 11.] Wiggins on the Atomic Theoiy, &c. 03 



the subject, but refer the reader to the pages of this work. Indeed, 

 1 did not expect that such prejudice on the one side, and partiality 

 on the other, should flow from the pen of so respectable a writer as 

 Dr. Thomson. 



" The generous age of chemical science is no more. In my 

 early days it was my fortune to live at the same time, and to asso- 

 ciate with many of the venerable fathers of our present system. In 

 that auspicious period the ultimate and ardently expected object of 

 research was truth, not the advancement of an individual's reputa- 

 tion. Philosophers were then eager to attribute the merit of disco- 

 very to its rightful owner, not to appropriate it to themselves or 

 others. But now, in the vale of life, I am myself obliged to rescue 

 the labours of my youth from the claims of those who have adopted 

 them without ceremony, and who have even attempted to force them 

 from me by means of their combined exertions. However, justice 

 will force its way, sooner or later, against all obstacles and preju- 

 dices. The subject is not now confined to the decisions of a few 

 individuals, but is laid before a grand tribunal, and it rests with 

 them to give a verdict." 



Such is the whole of the Appendix, which, in justice to Mr. 

 Higgins, I thought should by no means be withheld from my 

 readers. If they will now take the trouble to turn to the Annuls of 

 Philosophy for May, they will find an answer to almost all the 

 observations which this Appendix contains. Indeed, when I was 

 writing an answer to Mr. Nash, I suspected that I was in fact 

 refuting the objections of Mr. Higgins himself ; and this suspicion 

 has turned out to be well founded. But I must not leave unnoticed 

 one or two things stated or hinted at in this Appendix, which in my 

 opinion claim and require an explicit answer. 



I may just notice a mistake into which Mr. Higgins has fallen in 

 the outset, when he says that an extract from Professor Berzelius' 

 paper on the cause of chemical proportions appeared in the Annals 

 of Philosophy. If he had been at the trouble to read the paper in 

 question, and I can assure him that it is worth his perusal, or if he 

 had perused the title of it, he would have seen that it was not an 

 extract of a paper, but an original paper sent by Professor Berzelius 

 lor insertion in the Annals of Philosophy. I would not have noticed 

 this mistake, which I admit to be of no consequence whatever, had 

 it not been that Mr. Higgins expresses himself as if hurt at the 

 wrong title which 1 inadvertently gave to his book. He may judge 

 from his own error that a man may fall into such a mistake without 

 Ijciug actuated by disingenuous motives, or having formed a prede- 

 termined plan to injure his reputation. 



Mr. Higgins asks, if 1 thought so highly of his book as I sny I 

 do, why I never noticed it in my Chemistry ; and adds, that as a com- 

 piler I should not have passed it over. 1 have no objection, since 

 he puts the question, to give him an explicit answer. 



.Sly object, when 1 wrote my System of Chemistry, was to make 

 as complete a collection as possible of all the chemical facts that 



