284 Hare’s Blowpipe. 
son to communicate the fact to the publick r _ How does it 
happen that there is no account of the invention nor of any 
results obtained by it either in the elementary treatise of 
that great man, or in any of the cotemporary scientific 
journals. On the conirary, in the Elements just alluded to, 
Lavoisier treats of the heat produced by oxygen gas, and 
carbon, as the highest that art could produce.* ‘ 
Dr. Clark informs us that Dr. Thomson, now Professor 
of Chemistry at Glasgow, made experiments with the mixed 
gases seventeen years ago, but was induced to abandon the 
undertaking, in consequence of accidents that happened to 
his apparatus. Can any thing more fully display unfairness, 
than that abortive experiments, made subsequently to those. 
in which I was successful, should be adduced as subversive 
of my pretensions ? 
Dr. Clark states that the Americans claim the mvention 
on account of experiments made by me in 1802. They 
were published in 1802; my apparatus and my first ex- 
periments were made in 1801. 
Had Lavoisier, or any other person, availed himself of 
the heat produced by the union of the gaseous elements of 
water, how could the sagacious Dr. Thomson fail in his 
efforts to retrace a path so well and so recently trodden: or 
if deriving any advantage from the experiments either of 
the French philosopher, or those which he so imperfectly 
tried, why did he conceal it when occupied during so many 
years in cornmunicating to the world all his chemical 
knowledge in five successive editions of his system? 
So far were Dr. Thomson’s experiments, or his knowledge 
on these subjects, from reaching the facts discovered by me, 
that he appears to have considered the authority of one 
name inadequate to establish what he vainly had endeav- 
oured to effect. Hence, until plagiarism had given them a 
new shape, and perhaps a false gilding, they were totally 
overlooked in his compilations. He neither treated of the 
pure earths as susceptible of fusion, nor of platinum as sus~ 
ceptible of volatilization, until many years after I had 
proved them to be so, and promulgated my observations. 
Dr. Clark gives himself great credit for having first pointed 
out the importance of employing the gases in such relative 
* See plate, Fig. 10. (end of the volume.) 
