384 Miscellanies, 



to that periodical of which he is the editor and proprietor, (the Annals 

 of Electricity,) they might have rested undisturbed on my part ; but 

 when he publishes this new version of the affair in another quarter of 

 the globe, selecting as a vehicle a journal of such established reputation 

 as yours, whose pages are read wherever science is cultivated, and 

 uro-es as a reason for publishing this new version, the want of clear- 

 ness with which my account (as read before the London Electrical So- 

 ciety) was drawn out, I feel that I should be wanting in justice to my- 

 self and those who were with me, if I suffered it to pass unnoticed. 

 With respect, first, to his charge against me of want of clearness ; I 

 shall not attempt to confute this, but refer your readers to his descrip- 

 tion on page 31, and mine (which you have copied verbatim) in pages 

 33, 34 ; and if a comparison is drawn between these, and it should 

 appear that mine is deficient, though I confess I am at a loss to discover 

 in what, be it so : palmam feral qui meruit. There is one thing most 

 assuredly conspicuous in his, which, he may think — though he should 

 have thought so before, when he corrected the manuscript and the proof 

 sheets, for they were all submitted to his inspection — is not recognized 

 in mine ; I allude to the frequent recurrence of the pronoun I. The 

 account I drew up was descriptive of a series of experiments, carried 

 on by Messrs. Gassiot, Mason, Sturgeon, and myself, at the house of 

 Mr- Gassiot, and at his sole expense. The sole object was to advance 

 the interests of science, through the medium of the London Electrical 

 Society, and not to found individual claims to individual experiments, 

 when each by agreement was contributing his own share to the com- 

 mon stock ; you may judge, therefore, of the surprise with which I 

 saw the experiment in question, not only claimed by Mr. Sturgeon as 

 his but also as being undertaken from certain views which he had long 

 entertained. If he had entertained these views, he had a marvelous 

 manner of concealing the experiments he had based on them ; we, in 

 our innocence of what good things were in store, were plodding on 

 through that extended series of experiments on decomposition, with 

 such a battery as had never been excited before, and yet our chief man 

 (for he was the only scientific man by profession among us) is unable 

 to avail himself of the first opportunity that ever occurred to him of 

 bringing his views to the test. Only a feio of his experiments were 

 attempted, he says. If you, gentlemen, were personally acquainted 

 with Mr. Gassiot, and had seen, I will not say the lilerality only, but 

 the ardor with which he encourages every attempt at experimental de- 

 monstration, you would wonder what change could have come over 

 him, that he should have left Mr. Sturgeon's experiments last on the 

 list. But granting that this experiment was peculiarly his, surely it 

 was strange to leave it unadopted for so many months ; he did not claim 



