90 Animadversions on Mr. GeneVs Memorial, $c. 



And " I can call spirits from the vasty deep, 11 but then they 

 will not come when I do call them ; and I apprehend that, 

 unless the voice of Mr. Genet be seconded by means more 

 efficient than those presented in his memorial, he will find 

 that matter is, sometimes, as disobedient as spirit. 



The basis upon which the assumptions of our author are built, 

 is, that there is a force in fluids, which urges them in a direc- 

 tion contrary to that of gravity : and that in consequence of 

 this upward force, and independently of the general laws of 

 atmospheric pressure, the motion of a balloon, in ascending, 

 is accelerated as the atmosphere grows lighter, and its pres- 

 sure is decreased. And that this Upward force or " force of 

 levity ," has been entirely overlooked, or neglected. — Caloric, 

 or the matter of heat, is assumed to be this principle of levi- 

 ty ; it is said that it "gives levity to ponderosity, changes the 

 laws of gravity, and denotes by its tendency to reascend to its 

 center of circulation, that gravity is not a positive, but a ne- 

 gative force, that it is not an active, but a passive agent. 11 

 These are " the new natural powers, put in requisition, 1 ' 

 and for the application of which, Mr. Genet has obtained a 



PATENT. 



I have looked, in vain, for a single fact, tending to prove 

 the correctness of these assumptions ; they stand therefore, in 

 the same predicament with the assertion that, two and two 

 make five ; and it certainly would not be deemed wise to 

 enter into an elaborate argument to disprove such an asser- 

 tion, merely because some estimable, but wrong headed in- 

 dividual had made it. The "Preliminary principles, facts 

 and authorities, 11 (Memorial p. 12 to 22,) furnish no data 

 whatever in support of the existence of his " New natural 

 power, 11 but contain, with the exception of many of those 

 errors in philosophy, which are so thickly scattered over his 

 pages, a number of admitted facts and principles relative to 

 specific gravity ; atmospheric pressure ; pressure of water ; 

 aerostatics ; mechanical powers, &c. It was in this part, if 

 any where, that we ought to have been informed, why bal- 

 loons, if made air tight, should not, after they have reached 

 that point where they shake off their mundane coil, obey im- 

 plicitly the principle of levity, by which they are elevated, 

 " tending to reascend to its center of circulation," the sun, 

 and fly off to that luminary. Why the atmosphere itself, and 

 all other gaseous bodies, should not rise from the surface of 

 the earth, and, borne upward by their specific levity, seek the 



