309 
taken any step to publish his discovery” (Appendix C, p. 49, Blakely’s 
second pamphlet “‘On proposed New Method of Constructing Ord- 
nance,” &¢c. Ridgeway: London, 1858), up that date, which is long 
after my design of 1854; and I am not aware that Sir Charles Fox 
has himself ever publicly claimed to be a discoverer in the matter at all. 
It is not necessary for me to refer to what Captain Blakely has written, 
as to my communication with Dr. Hart, further than to remark that, as 
I recollect his spoken reply, he sa¢d nothing whatever like what he 
has penned on the subject, and that his written words—‘‘ Mr. Mallet 
has read to us one letter in which Dr. Hart gave the same account,” 
&c.—were never uttered by him, or I should have at once required him 
to name the letter he referred to, as I never read any letter whatever 
from Dr. Hart throughout this matter. 
Those who will peruse my paper read here on the 11th inst., ob- 
serving the dates, &c., will have no difficulty in clearing up the confu- 
sion introduced by Captain Blakely’s reference to Dr. Hart’s letter to the 
“‘ Mechanics’ Magazine” (February 21, 1857), and seeing its total irre- 
yelance, to which I must add, that nothing of this was alluded to, much 
less uttered by Captain Blakely in his spoken reply of the 11th inst. 
It was remarked here on the last evening by Mr. Jellett, that my 
paper read here on the 25th June, 1855, was not all read at the time, 
and that, so far as he could judge, only about one-fifth of its printed 
matter was then written. 
The text of the paper consists of 172 pages, and the notes in close 
type of 110 pages. If the latter be reduced to the type of the text, they 
occupy an equal volume very nearly with the text, and as none of the 
notes were written until the paper was printing, the above estimate of 
one-fifth becomes two-fifths, even assuming the original fraction of the 
whole, as in type, correct, which I cannot admit. 
I brought the original MS. to the Council, of which I was then a’ 
Member, while the paper was being printed, and showed its members that 
_ not thirty-five pages (which would be one-fifth), but rather more than 
120 pages of the whole 172, were written in full, and that a synoptic 
statement of all the remainder of the paper, which I exhibited to Council, 
was also written and upon the table of the Academy on the 25th June, 
1855, and I have the MS. now by me; the occasion of this was an ob- 
jection raised to the cost of printing the large bulk of the notes. 
I remarked, in reply to Mr. Jellett on the 11th inst., that, whether 
this were so or not, was immaterial to the question of priority before us, 
inasmuch as this does not rest upon my paper of the 25th June, 1855, 
only (nor necessarily at all), but upon my design of October, 1854. 
I further recalled your own recollection, and that of other members 
of the Academy, to the circumstance that my paper of the 25th June, 
1855, had, in fact, not been read at all—that, the occasion being that 
of a visit from the Lord Lieutenant, there was not time to do so, and 
that I was only permitted to give a vivd voce account of one or two por- 
tions of it, and that one of those parts which I then chose for illustra- 
tion, viz., my explanation of the causes of liability to bursting of cannon 
R. I. A. PROC.—VOL. VII. 3k 
