282, Hare’s Blowpipe. 
About the same time my experiments were repeated be- 
fore Dr. Priestly, who gave them the credit of being quite 
original. 
Some years afterwards Mr. Cloud of the United States 
mint, who has distinguished himself by the discovery of pal- 
ladium in gold, having purified platina, so as to make its 
gravity equal to 22, requested me to subject it to my blow- 
pipe. In the presence of this gentleman, 1 was completely 
successful in dissipating a portion of this pure metal. He 
was so much pleased with my experiments that he made an 
apparatus for himself, simplifying that part which was em- 
ployed for holding the aeriform agents, by the omission of 
some appendages which were not necessary to his pur- 
pose.* Thus modified, my apparatus was introduced into 
use by Mr. Rubens Peale : ; and has for about ten years 
been employed by him, to amuse visitors at the celebrated 
museum established by his father in Philadelphia. 
It appears by the testimony of Professor Silliman and 
others, that Dr. Hope had during his lectures at different 
times within a period of eight years, employed my blowpipe 
and awarded the invention of it to me. A reference to the 
third edition of Murray’s chemistry, published before Dr. 
Clark professes to have attended to the subject, will demon- 
strate the impressions of the author of that work as the re- 
sults of my experiments which I had published, are there 
quoted solely on my authority. 
The memoir of Professor Silliman, read before the Con- 
necticut Academy of Sciences, May 1812, and republished 
lately in Tilloch’s Magazine, but which Dr. Clark has not 
ventured to notice, affords the most unanswerable evidence 
that we had anticipated him in almost every important ex- 
periment. 
Mr. Reuben Haines, corresponding secretary of the Acad- 
emy of Sciences, informed me in 1813, that in the laborato- 
ry of Dr. Pursh in this city, a mixture of’ the gaseous ele- 
ments of water had been inflamed while issuing in a stream 
from a punctured bladder previously filled with them and 
duly compressed. <Any relaxation of the pressure was of 
course productive of an explosion. He on the other hand 
recollects that at that time 1 proposed this mode of supply- 
* It has been erroneously alleged that be simplified the blowpipe. 
