Notice from Dr. Robert Hare. 331 



who is employed to exhibit the hydro-oxygen microscope at the 

 Adelaide Gallery, London, asserted that I had accomplished the 

 fusion, of which mention has been above made, by means of a 

 blowpipe of his contrivance, which I had purchased while in 

 London. 



The opinion which I am obliged to entertain of an individual 

 capable of this groundless assertion, would cause me to consider 

 him unworthy of notice, had not his misstatement been made 

 before an assemblage which I most highly esteem, and had he 

 not been honored by a premium for his pretended invention by a 

 respectable British Society, 



The blowpipe which is thus falsely alleged to have been used 

 by me, differs immaterially from one of which I published an 

 engraving and description in the American Journal of Science for 

 1820, vol. II, p. 298, being a modification of that originally con- 

 trived by me and republished in Tilloch's Philosophical Magazine, 

 vol. XIV, for 1802. 



Between the instruments described in these publications, or in 

 the Franklin Journal, and that employed by Maugham, the only 

 difference worthy of notice is, that the latter is near the apex bent 

 so as to form an acute angle, and is thus rendered suitable for 

 directing the flame upon a revolving cylinder of lime. 



Although I purchased of Newman a blowpipe bent as described, 

 with an apparatus attached for holding and turning a cylinder of 

 lime, / have never tnade any use of it, having for the purpose of 

 subjecting lime to the flame, found my modification above referred 

 to as described in this Journal, preferable. It only required the 

 jet pipe to be directed upwards in an angle of about forty five 

 degrees with the axis of the lime cylinder. 



I do not consider the form of my blowpipe employed by Mr. 

 M. as qualified for the fusion of any metal. 



It is remarkable that an apparatus of gasometers employed by 

 Maugham at the Adelaide Gallery for the supply of the gases for 

 the blowpipe differs but little from the apparatus proposed for the 

 same purpose in my communication above adverted to, and pub- 

 lished nearly twenty years ago. 



However the process by which I have lately extended the power 

 of the hydro-oxogen blowpipe may differ from those to which I 

 had previously resorted, it differs still more from that modification 

 which Maugham has claimed as his own. 



