
          time after his discovery was published in your Journal. I believe
Prof. H never believed that it could possibly be applied to any useful
purpose & merely regarded the apparatus as a "philosophical toy"
& so he told the Vermont blacksmith himself. It is surprising
how people love to be [humbugged?].

I have not yet been able to get a mechanic to make my
condensing apparatus for Carbonic Acid. The engineer of
the Dry Dock Company undertook to do the work, but he has
not done anything yet.

Since I had the pleasure of seeing
you in New York I have made many epts.[experiments] on condensing
gases in tubes of glass & have succeeded admirably. I only
me with one accident, which, however did no other injury than
throwing a little sulphuric acid in my face. I had a fine
quantity of the condensed liquid in a sealed tube, but wishing to 
aid the generation of the Carb.acid by heat, I plunged one end
of the tube into hot water while the other was cooled with a
freexing mixture, but it soon burst & shattered the tube & the
tumbler in which it was partly immersed. I was close by it when that
explosion took place, but the force of the shock was so much diminished
by the water surrounding the tube that I was not hurt. The
expln.[explosion] would not have occured had not the sulphate of ammonia plugged
up the tube so that the gas generated before was [added: not] affected by the freezing
mixture of the other end. A [added: perforated] cork was fitted to the orifices of the 
upper vessel & the condensing tube (containing carb. amm. & sul. acid) was
passed into it & surrounded with snow and salt. The lower part of the tube
was immersed in a jar of hot water, but I found that at (*) there was
a stricture, or rather an accumulation of crystd.[crystallized] sul. amm. I have a tube prepared.
[small drawing of the apparatus being describedin the text]
        