ESSAY IV. 



ADDITIONAL INFORMATION CONCERNING FLUOR 

 MINERAL. 1 BY MR. MBYEH. 



SECTION I. 



IT is always of advantage to chemistry, when new and im- 

 portant experiments are controverted soon after their publi- 

 cation. If any mistakes, as so easily happens in chemical 

 researches, be committed in the experiments themselves, or 

 if a false theory be founded upon them, the error is not 

 continued half a century, nor does it pass from one element- 

 ary book into another, till at last some sceptic thinks of 

 inquiring more narrowly into the matter. 



If the experiments be exact, and the theory founded 

 on them true, such a controversy commonly gives occa- 

 sion to new researches which otherwise would not have 

 been made, and the subject is placed in a clearer point of 

 view. 



It were indeed to be wished that both parties held 

 truth strictly in view ; that they brought no false experi- 

 ments into the dispute, and observed and explained the 

 phenomena no otherwise than a friend to truth, uninterested 

 in the controversy, would do, and advanced contradictory 

 assertions with as much caution as possible. It is by no 

 means rare for a man, eager to convict his adversary of a 



1 Meyer's Beytraage zur Kenntniw des flusspaths. Schriften der Ber- 

 linischer Gesellschaft Natur-forscherder Freunde. B. 2. t. 319. 



