Dr. Attfield on the Spectrum of Carbon. 107 



These are strong terms, especially when penned by an Astro- 

 nomer Royal, and with the deliberation involved in the circum- 

 stances of serial publication. Very strong experimental evidence 

 obtained by himself would surely scarcely justify an Astrouomer 

 Royal in the employment of such terms. Yet (will it be be- 

 lieved ?) not a tittle of such evidence is forthcoming. Nay, the 

 spectrum which I stated to be that of carbon, a statement con- 

 firmed over and over again by eminent chemists and physicists 

 (Pliicker, Morren, Marshall Watts), Mr. Piazzi Smyth asserts is 

 not only not that of carbon, but solely that of a hydrocarbon — 

 again an assertion unsupported by any experimental evidence what- 

 ever. It is true that Mr. Smyth quotes Lielegg and Crookes 

 against me. But Lielegg supports me, and Crookes is cited be- 

 cause of an editorial footnote in the 'Chemical News' appended to 

 a notice of Morren's paper, asking experimentalists what they 

 meant by the "vapour of carbon " existing in a flame. As for 

 Lielegg, I will quote without comment the last sentence but one 

 of hisTpaper (Eng. trans, in Phil. Mag. March ]869, p. 216: — 

 u Therefore tubes filled with combinations of carbon and hydro- 

 gen show the lines of carbon and those of hydrogen; tubes 

 filled with carbonic oxide or carbonic acid gas show those of 

 carbon and oxygen, giving, in fact, a spectrum of carbon, be- 

 cause the extremely small pressure and the high temperature co- 

 operate in reducing the carbon to a gaseous condition." Pliicker, 

 who, with Faraday, General Sabine, and Geissler, spent two or three 

 hours with me at the Royal Institution minutely examining my 

 spectra — Pliicker afterwards writes, on Nov. 12, 1862: "Je suis 

 d'accord avec vous sur Pexistence du spectre de la vapeur de car- 

 bone/' Morren says, on page 6 of the paper already mentioned, 

 " Je me mis done au travail avec la pensee preconcue de com- 

 battre ^assertion emise par le savant anglais; mais il resulte, au 

 contraire, des experiences auxquelles je me suis livre, que M. 

 Attfield a raison, et que e'est bien la vapeur du carbone qui 

 donne le spectre indique plus haut." 



I might just refer to some minor statements made by Mr. 

 Piazzi Smyth. He says, in a paper to which he draws atten- 

 tion as not having been accepted, as he desired, by the Roysl 

 Astronomical Society, but afterwards printed in the • Observa- 

 tions ' of his own observatory, that the question put by Crookes 

 was never answered. I answered it at once, and the reply was 

 inserted in the ' Chemical News ' a fortnight after the question 

 was asked. I did not work "in a rich London laboratory." 

 "With ordinary induction-coils, borrowed, the one from a captain 

 in the army, the other from Mr. Gassiot; with a spectroscope 

 which Dr. Frankland would scarcely now own ; with tubes and 

 apparatus made by my own hands, and made, I believe chemi- 

 cally clean ; and by the aid of well-fitting shutters in an ill-fur- 



