Papers relating to the Fuswn of Carbon. 117 
aiihough on an experimental subject, consists of arguments 
alone, whatever ingenuity these may exhibit.” 
Those who have read Mr. Vanuxem’s last memoir, (page 102.) and my 
strictures upon it, will be enabled to judge how far this reasoning does 
honcur to the body whence it originates. If it be indeed the duty of the 
Academy to see, that those who enter the lists upon the arena of their 
Journal, “use the same weapons,” one of the combatants having come 
into the field with a deflagrator, his assailant ought not to have been 
allowed to arm himself with a compound blowpipe. 
It must be evident, that the object of my strictures was, to expose two 
fallacious impressions, which Mr. Vanuxem had endeavoured to convey 
to his readers. First, that his inability to fuse carbon by a compound 
blowpipe, proved it infusible by a deflagrator ; and secondly, that Pro- 
fessor Silliman had sanctioned this procedure. How were these fallacies 
to be corrected, agreeably to the views of the Committee? Were they 
to be met with the “same weapons,” agreeably to one part of the 
reasoning ; or, according to another part, by the “instruments of the 
Eaboratory;” rendered so especially appropriate, by its being in a 
“‘ literary contesé 2” 
The latter passages of Mr. Vanuxem’s memoir will show that it is 
both controversial, and argumentative ; and that the commencing para- 
graph was intended to convey the erroneous impressions which it was my 
object to correct. 
Mr. Vanuxem’s friends opposed the admission of my strictures, upon 
the plea, that criticism is not permitted in the Journal of the Academy, 
which is, virtually, the same ground as that taken in the report, agreea- 
bly to the quotation which has been made from it; yet a reference 
to the pages of the work in question will show, that, in the late num- 
bers, there is much criticism on Wilson’s Ornithology ; and, for an 
earlier instance, I would cite the paper of Mr. Say, Vol. I. page 405. 
I cannot understand, how temperate criticism is to be excluded, with- 
out injury to the cause of truth. But if the Academy are resolved at all 
events, to deny its admission, they should not publish papers which, un- 
2ccompanied by it, must give false impressions. 
This must always ensue, when correct observations or experiments are 
‘incorrectly associated or applied. Thus, in Natural History, one animal 
or plant, may be mistaken for another, and observations communicated, 
tending to mislead the public, until the mistake is exposed from the 
author’s own statements. The errors which drew forth Mr. Say’s strict- 
ures, to which allusion has been made, were of this kind, and are very 
analogous to the confusion of malleable iron, with fused carbon, or a, 
compound blowpipe, with a galvanic deflagrator. 
