U^J5 



THE 



AMERICAN 

 JOURNAL OF SCIENCE, &c. 



Art. I. — Second Letter to Prof. Faraday ; from R. Hare, M. D., 

 Professor of Chemistry in the University of Pennsylvania. 



Philadelphia, February, 1841. 



TO PROF. FARADAY. 



My dear Sir — In the month of July last I had the pleasure 

 to read, in the American Journal of Science, your letter in reply 

 to one which I had addressed to you through the same channel. 

 I should sooner have noticed this letter, but that meanwhile I 

 have had to republish two of my text-books, and, besides, could 

 not command, until lately, a complete copy of all those numbers 

 of your researches to which you have referred. 



The tenor of the language with which your letter commen- 

 ces realizes the hope, which I cherished, that my strictures would 

 call forth an amicable reply. Under these circumstances it would 

 grieve me that you should consider any part of my language as 

 charging you with inconsistency or self-contradiction, as if it 

 could be my object to put you in the wrong, farther than might 

 be necessary to establish my conception of the truth. Certainly 

 it has been my wish never to go beyond the sentiment, '•' Amicus 

 Plato, sed magis arnica Veritas.'''' I attach high importance to 

 the facts established by your " Researches,''^ which can only be 

 appreciated sufficiently by those who have experienced the labor, 

 corporeal and mental, which experimental investigations require. 

 I am moreover grateful for the disposition to do me justice, man- 

 ifested in those researches ; yet it may not always be possible for 

 me to display the deference, which I nevertheless entertain. I am 



Vol. xLi, No. 1. — April-June, 1841. 1 



