339 
of the separate edition, and not of our Transactions, from which he 
quoted, and the passage referred to is not am the teat at all, but in one of 
the notes to the paper, which I specially mention in the Preface to that 
separate issue—all take date after the reading of the paper, and were 
added as it was being printed, viz., in April and May, 1856. Yet he 
proceeds to say—‘‘ In consequence of the error in the date ascribed to 
Mr. Mallet’s publication, I retract my former admission, that he was 
the first to publish the theory,” &c. I leave the Academy to form its 
own judgment as to the value of a conclusion based on such grounds. 
Again, in Captain Blakely’s paper, read here the 14th May last, he 
says—‘‘I wrote to Dr. Hart to know the date of his researches, and 
his reply was, that he had not turned his attention to the matter until 
some months after he (Blakely) had made the guns,’’—namely, the 
18-pounder and the 9-pounder burst at Woolwich in 1855-56. Now, 
the issue between Dr. Hart and Captain Blakely is simply which of 
them first published the mathematical investigation, and has nothing to 
do with the date at which Captain Blakely made his guns. The date of 
these guns would be an argument in point as against me, as proving a 
prior general knowledge of a method of construction, if it could be shown 
that they were made anterior to the date, December, 1854, at which, 
as I have already shown, I exhibited designs for ordnance involving 
the same method of construction; but it does not touch the question as 
between Dr. Hart and Captain Blakely; and is made to appear to bear 
upon it only by wilfully confounding the two issues of this contro- 
versy. 
T am astonished at, but cannot comprehend, his adding to this 
reasoning, that ‘‘Mr. Mallet corroborated what he said.” I deny the 
fact. 
In this same paper, Captain Blakely says—‘“ He received definite in- 
formation three years ago’”-from both Dr. Hart and myself (as to those 
rights of priority, namely), and that ‘‘if he entertained mistaken notions, 
_he was misled by myself.’ 
T never saw Captain Blakely, nor knew anything about him beyond 
a note of introduction which he sent me, until October, 1857, the same 
month in which the 36-inch mortars were first fired. On the morning 
of the day on which those mortars were first fired at Woolwich (October 
19, 1857), I received the following note from Captain Blakely (not dated, 
but its last words fix the date) :— 
‘©10, Bolton-street, Piccadilly | Oct.* |, Monday. 
_ “My pear Mr. Matrer,—I enclose you a number of ‘The Mechanics’ 
Magazine,’ criticizing my pamphlet on guns, and saying you have fore- 
stalled me. A disclaimer of this would come much more gracefully 
from you than from me, and I could add, that only in that one point 
* Erased in Captain Blakely’s original MS. 
