Hos ego versiculos feci, tul 
The late Dr. Robert Hare. 101 
This apparatus was the earliest and perhaps the most remark- 
able of his original contributions to science. It was certainly 
evidence of a highly cies a sual mind, that Dr. Hare, in that _ 
Beckie early period in modern chemistry, and when the 
skill as an expen ats ad beaten up the same path so far 
as to direct a jet of oxygen upon charcoal, and he thus produced 
a degree of heat by which he fused alumina and other bodies 
before deemed infusible. He had even brought the elements of 
water into the same vessel and had there burned them from sep- ~ 
arate jets, in his Sah apparatus for the recomposition of water, 
But it seems never to have occurred to him that here wasa 
~ eh of heat ae hie any then known. In our view Dr. 
e’s merit as a scientific philosopher is more clearly estab- 
lished upon this discovery than upon any other of the numerous 
contributions he has made to science. His original experiments 
were repeated in 1802-3 in presence of Dr. Priestly, rte dis- 
coverer of oxygen, then on a visit to Philadelphia, and of Silli- 
man, Woodhouse and others. They were subsequently greatly 
extended by Prof. Silliman, who, with the apparatus alread 
results in the Memoirs Soe ee head Mer Tee. 
noted, 
find it Pinte to notice the Caine a : a Dr. Clark of 
Cambridge, Eng., in his ‘gas blowpipe,' to overlook or yri- 
ate the discovery of Dr. Hare PPS the researches py aa 
and others, several years after (in 1819) this discovery had been 
fully before the scientific world,—an effect which must ever re- 
main as a sad i stain upon the reputation of this otherwise distin- 
man.* 
“t; is not our purpose here to rehearse the history of Dr. Hare’s 
doe in full, much less to describe all the modifications 
which the apparatus has received at the hands of its original 
connection, Dr. Hare’s elaborate de- 
