444 Miscellaneous Intelligence. 



attention of French chemists to this substance. At Paris, the thing was 

 at first considered hardly credible, and jokes even were passed upon it; 

 but when there couid no longer remain any doubt as to the reality of 

 the discovery, and when several chemists in Germany and other coun- 

 tries had published the processes which they employed to prepare the 

 gun-cotton, then a lively interest was manifested in a subject which had 

 just before excited derision, and it was soon pretended that the new ex- 

 plosive substance was an old French discovery. It was declared to be 

 nothing more than the xyloidine first discovered by M. Braconnot, and 

 afterwards investigated anew by M. Pelouze, and the only merit left me 

 was to have conceived the happy idea of putting this substance into a 

 gun-barrel. The knowledge of the composition of xyloidine ought to 

 have sufficed to convince those who put forward that opinion, that it is not 

 suited for firearms, on account of its containing too much carbon and 

 too little oxygen for the chief part to be converted into gaseous matters 

 during the combustion. It was moreover very easy to discover the es- 

 sential differences which exist between the xyloi'dine of Braconnot and 



gun-cotton. Nevertheless the error was kept up for some months. 



Matters stood thus, when, on the 4th of last November, a Scotch 

 chemist, Mr. Walter Crum of Glasgow, published a memoir, in which 

 he showed that gun-cotton is not the same product as xyloidine, but that 

 it presents an essentially different composition ; and towards the end or 

 the same month, the French Academy received a communication of 

 the same nature. The gun-cotton was then no longer xyloidine; it was 

 called pyroxyloidine, and the first was admitted to be unsuitable for 

 firearms. 



If, therefore, it is proved that from the commencement of 1846 I pre- 

 pared gun-cotton, and applied it to the discharge of fire-arms and that 

 M. Boettger did the same in the month of August,— if it be admitted 

 that xyloidine cannot serve the same purposes as this cotton, and if < 

 be notoriously known that what is now called pyroxyloidine was not 

 brought before the French Academy and the scientific world until to- 

 wards the middle of last November, the idea of attributing to France 

 the discovery of gun-cotton cannot be seriously entertained, or of as- 

 signing to me merely a practical application of that which another 

 would have discovered. 



I appeal to the justice of Frenchmen, to decide the point to whom 

 belongs the honor of not only being the first to apply the new substanc 

 in question, but also of having first prepared it— to MM- Braconnot an 

 Pelouze, or myself. I must, moreover, add expressly, that it was n^ 

 xyloidine even which led to my discovery, however intimate may e i 

 relation with gun-cotton ; it was theoretical ideas, possibly very error i 

 ous ones, but which are peculiarly my own, as well as some facts w l 

 I was also the first to discover. Suum cuiquc is a principle of mora te ^ 

 on which society at large rests ; why should it not be strictly reS P eC an( j 

 in the republic of science ? M. Pelouze is a distinguished c,iemlS . l ' vate 

 already possesses a sufficiently high reputation not to require to e 

 his pretensions on the merits of others; and I am fully persua e 

 this estimable chemist, of well known truth of character, will, apf 

 dating with impartiality the circumstances which have occurred, 

 render me the justice to which I consider myself entitled. 



Bile, Dec. 28, 1846. 





