Hassler’s Experiments on the Expansion of Water. 171 
this free acidity predominated, normally ; but the fact was, tad 
his dogmatism arose out of his disgust at all pretence, and it w 
always manifested in proportion to the difference between the a 
ity and the pretension in any person cr thing that exhibited the 
latter. He was essentially a man of truth: assumption of any 
kind disgusted him; while to assumption without a basis (or 
what is commonly called humbug g) he was never merciful, but 
visited it with all the weight of logic and the sharpness of sar- 
casm. Those who knew him, knew that he could be both heavy 
and sharp. 
But to draw traits of character was by no means the Gp of 
this memoir; what has been said, has slipped from my pen s 
taneously. It is true, et honored by the intimacy of Mr. Haciee 
and even bound by a sort of half promise (for in the mathemati- 
cal probabilities of life, mes was every chance of my being long 
his survivor) I should years since, had the means been at my dis- 
posal, have endeavored to do justice to his memory by an account 
of the events he had mixed in, of the services he had rendered to- 
wards the stabilitation and diffusion of knowledge, and of the 
methods which he partly originated, and partly combined, for di- 
vers researches of science 
ut the present notice of one of these methods, and of its suc- 
cessful niet sa in the determination of a set of physical con- 
stants, is owing to no such editorial impulse. The fact is, that 
having occasion, in behalf of professional investigations in which 
I was concerned, to wish for a better tabulated statement of the 
were accessible to me, it came into my head to examine, 
reduce, and compare the quite extensive series of observations 
on this point which Mr. Hassler had ea the apparatus or 
apparatus is given. As it is no wise necessary to repeat here what 
is in print elsewhere, this reference will be sufficient. Only these 
particulars may be noted, viz: Ist, that the quantity of water op- 
erated upon, upwards of 30 avoirdupois pounds, was such as 
vastly to magnify the differences, and reduce the errors of observ- 
ation; 2nd, that the extent of observation, going as far as the va- 
ration of temperature in a whole year, and always allowing the 
temperatures to settle themselves by their natural en? in a 
= Baty soon Corer 1 See Ieee 
