Chemistry and Physics, 279 
The most trifling acts of kings and generals are recorded and 
commented upon, and any misstatement in regard to them is soon 
tected and pointed out to the confusion of the erring historian. But it 
disseminated by each suc eeding writer until the authority in favor of 
the error preponderates (numerically at least) over that in favor of the 
truth 
A striking instance of this occurs in relation to Sir H. Davy’s great 
discovery. Seeing it stated in Lardner’s Hand-book of Electricity that it 
was with the great battery of two thousand pairs of plates belonging to 
the Royal Institution that Davy succeeded in decomposing the alkalies 
and resolving them into metals and oxygen, and knowing that such w 
: n this poin aware that Pouillet in his ig Tr 
ique” (from which Lardner has largely copied) makes a similar statement ; 
ut this I was prepare expect in the works of an associate of those 
somewhat surprised me, and I was still more astonished to find that Brit- 
ish authors, long before the time of Lardner and Pouillet, had given cur- 
battery used consisted of only one hundred pairs of six inch plates; and 
still further, in a note to the Bakerian lecture for 1808, he states that 
many have been deterred from repeating these experiments, supposing 
