384 Miscellanies. 
to that periodical of which he is the editor and proprietor, (the Annals 
of Electricity,) they might have rested undisturbed on my part ; but 
when he publishes this new version of the affair in another quarter of 
the globe, selecting as a vehicle a journal of such established repufation 
as yours, whose pages are read wherever science is cultivated, and 
urges as a reason for publishing this new version, the want of clear- 
ness with which my account (as read before the London Electrical So- 
ciety) was drawn out, I feel that I should be wanting in justice to my- 
self and those who were with me, if I suffered it to pass unnoticed. 
With respect, first, to his charge against me of want of clearness; I 
shall not attempt to confute this, but refer your readers to his descrip- 
tion on page 31, and mine (which you have copied verbatim) in pages 
33, 34; and if a comparison is drawn between these, and it should 
appear that mine is deficient, though I confess I am at a loss to discover 
in what, be it so: palmam ferat qui meruit. ‘There is one thing most 
assuredly conspicuous in his, which, he may think—though he should 
have thought so before, when he corrected the manuscript and the proof 
sheets, for they were all submitted to his inspection—is not recognized 
in mine ; I allude to the frequent recurrence of the pronoun J, The 
account I drew up was descriptive of a series of experiments, carried 
on by Messrs. Gassiot, Mason, Sturgeon, and myself, at the house of 
Mr. Gassiot, and at his sore expense. ‘The sole object was to advance 
the interests of science, through the medium of the London Electrical 
Society, and not to found individual claims to individual experiments, 
when each by agreement was contributing his own share to the com- 
mon stock ; you may judge, therefore, of the surprise with which I 
saw the experiment in question, not only claimed by Mr. Sturgeon as 
his, but also as being undertaken from certain views which he had long 
entertained. If he had entertained these views, he had a marvelous 
manner of concealing the experiments he had based on them; we, in 
our innocence of what good things were in store, were plodding on 
that extended series of experiments on decomposition, with 
such a finttony as had never been excited before, and yet our chief man 
(for he was the only scientific man by profession among us) is unable 
to avail himself of the first opportunity that ever occurred to him of 
bringing his views to the test. Only a few of his experiments were 
attempted, he says. If you, gentlemen, were personally acquainted 
with Mr. Gassiot, and had seen, I will not say the liberality only, but 
the ardor with which he encourages every attempt at experimental de- 
monstration, you d wonder what change could have come over 
him, that he should have te Mr. arene. experiments last on the 
was strange to lowe SRI months ; aiid ned chile 
