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month’s ‘‘ Mechanic’s Magazine” (November, 1857), in which he states 
that I had informed him that I could not say which of us had the right of 
priority in the proposition to construct built-up guns, and of the prin- 
ciples upon which they depend. His own notes above will prove whe- 
ther I left the matter in doubt. 
That statement I forthwith replied to, and corrected, by a letter pub- 
lished in ‘‘The Mechanic’s Magazine,”’ 12th December, 1857, im which T 
have given the principal dates, and other circumstances, upon which this 
question rests ; and that letter ought to have settled the controversy. I 
found myself compelled, however, in the very same month to go over the 
same ground in the pages of ‘‘ The Press” London newspaper. 
There has been, therefore, no misleading on my part. I have from 
the outset denied Captain Blakely’s pretensions, and now thrice justi- 
fied my denial by simple appeal to dates. 
I shall not waste the time of the Academy by following Captain 
Blakely through the confusion that he has created by his second paper 
here of 28th of May last, all resting upon the supposition that Dr. Hart’s 
calculations were made and communicated to me in 1854, in place of July, 
1855. The mistake as to this date is Captain Blakely’s own.* I never 
made any such statement here on the evening of the 14th of May last. 
I could not have done so, for I read out the dates from the paper (a list 
of dates referring to this subject) which I now hold in my hand; and in 
any case I am ready to produce Dr. Hart’s original notes to me, the first 
dated 6th July, 1855, at any time ; and thus Captain Blakely’s conclusion 
‘that Dr. Hart’s memory is more accurate than mine, and that he, not 
Mr. Mallet, was an original and independent inventor,” resolves itself 
simply into a blunder of his own in adopting 1854 for 1855. 
Fortunately, I have never trusted to memory; I have sustained all 
that I have here or elsewhere brought forward by appeal to documents 
or credible witnesses, and I can only regret, for the sake of his own scien- 
tific rights, that Dr. Hart did not apply to me, for the sight again of his 
own notes, and sohave got their exact dates, before hereplied from memory 
to any of Captain Blakely’s questions on this subject, and so prevented 
much of the confusion in which his own right to priority in publication 
of the mathematical investigation has been involved by that gentleman. 
And now to recapitulate. The result of the evidence I have adduced 
upon the two issues before the Academy is :—Upon the first, between 
Captain Blakely and myself, as respects priority in the envention of the 
method of constructing ordnance in superimposed rings with initial ten- 
sion, and clear grasp of the idea of increased strength so obtained. I ex- 
hibited the design for ordnance constructed on this method in December, 
1854. I published to this Academy a full exposition of the method and 
of its principles on the 25th of June, 1855. Captain Blakely’s earliest 
evidence of either his knowledge or use of the method is that of his gun, 
burst at Woolwich on the 25th of May, 1855; and his first exposition of 
* Or Dr. Hart’s, ifthe latter uttered the date as 1854, and not 1855, on the 14th May. 
