126 LIFE OF BENJAMIN SILLIMAN. 



them. There was also a Nooth's machine for impregnating 

 water with carbonic acid gas, and a collection of glass 

 tubes. I used also some of the glass bells from the phil- 

 osophical apparatus ; and, as my audience were novices, 

 probably the appearance of the apparatus was respectable. 

 I recollected, also, a remark which I heard Dr. Priestley 

 make, namely, that with Florence flasks (cleaned by sand 

 and ashes) and plenty of glass tubes, vials, bottles, and 

 corks, a tapering iron rod to be heated and used as a cork- 

 borer, and a few live coals with which to bend the tubes, a 

 good variety of apparatus might be fitted up. Some gun- 

 barrels also, he said, would be of much service ; and I had 

 brought from Philadelphia an old blacksmith's furnace, 

 which served for the heating of the iron tubes. He said, 

 moreover, that sand and bran, (coarse Indian meal is 

 better,) with soap, would make the hands clean, and that 

 there was no sin in dirt. 



At that time there were very few chemical instruments 

 of glass to be obtained in this country. I had picked up a 

 few glass retorts in Philadelphia, and I made application to 

 Mr. Mather, a manufacturer of glass in East Hartford, a 

 few years later, to make some for me. On stating my wish, 

 he said he had never seen a retort, but if I would send him 

 one as a pattern, he did not doubt he could make them. I 

 had a retort the neck or tube of which was broken off near 

 the ball, but as no portion was missing, and the two parts 

 exactly fitted each other, I sent this retort and its neck in 

 a box, never dreaming that there could be any blunder. 

 In due time, however, my dozen of green glass retorts, of 

 East Hartford manufacture, arrived, carefully boxed and 

 all sound, except that they were all cracked off in the neck 

 exactly where the pattern was fractured ; and broken neck 

 and ball lay in state like decapitated kings in their coffins. 

 This more than Chinese imitation affords a curious illustra- 

 tion of the state of the manufacture of chemical glass at 

 that time in this country, or rather in Connecticut; the 



