Hydro-orygen Blowpipe. 39 
Maungham at the Adelaide gallery in 1836, he treated this instru- 
ment as mine, in another form. I was surprised afterwards to 
learn that he had obtained a premium for this modification from 
the British Society for the Encouragement of Arts, without any 
allusion to the original inventor. 
After my return from Europe in 1836, I was very much in 
want of a piece of platinum of a certain weight, while many 
more scraps than were adequate to form such a piece were in my 
possession. ‘This induced new efforts to extend the power of 
my blowpipe ; and after many experiments, I succeeded so as 
to fuse twenty-eight ounces of platinum into one mass. 
Although small lumps of platinum had been fused by many 
operators, with the hydro-oxygen blowpipe, as well as myself, it 
id not, up to the year 1837, been found sufficiently competent 
to enable artists to resort to this process. Iam informed by Mr. 
Saxton, that some efforts which were made while he was in Lon- 
on were so little successful, that the project was abandoned. 
ere was an impression that the metal was rendered less mal- 
leable when fused upon charcoal, as in the experiments alluded 
to. ‘This is contradicted by my experiments, agreeably to which 
fused platinum is as malleable as the best specimens obtained by 
the Wollaston process, and is less liable to flake. The celebrated 
Dr. Ure, on seeing the platinum in the form of wire, of leaf, 
and plate, said that there was no one in Europe who could fuse 
dro-oxygen blowpipe. An incorporation of two ingots was ef- 
procured ‘as much as ninety per cent. of malleable metal. The 
malleability is not inferior to that of the best specimens obtained 
i t 
% noniac. here 1s, 
bility to tarnish, arising, probably, from the presence of a minute 
palladium. 
