Art. XXIV. On the Compound Blowpipe.
Art. XXIV. On the Compound Blowpipe. Extract from the Journal de Physique, of Paris, for January 1818.[14]
CONCERNING HEAT.
"Heat, considered as one of the most important agents, especially in relation to chemistry, and even to mineralogy, has also been the subject of numerous labours, both with regard to the means of augmenting and of diminishing its effects.
"To the former belong the numerous experiments made, especially in England, with the blowpipe, supplied by a mixture of oxygen and hydrogen gases. Mr. Clarke has evidently been more extensively engaged in these researches than any other person, as our readers have perceived in the extracts which we have given from the labours of this learned chemist; but it is proper also to give publicity to the protest (réclamation) made to us in favour of Mr. Silliman.
"We have already stated that Mr. Hare, of Philadelphia, first conceived the idea of forming a blowpipe with explosive gas; but as we have not been conversant with the memoirs of the Society of Arts and Sciences of Connecticut, we have not made mention of Mr. Silliman.
"The fact is, that this chemist, Professor at New-Haven, published, on the 7th of May,[15] 1812, a memoir containing the results of experiments made upon a very great number of bodies, until that time reputed to be infusible; and, among others, upon the alkaline earths, the decomposition of which he effected.
"The experiments of Mr. Clarke were therefore subsequent; but, having been made upon a still more extensive list of substances, they are scarcely less interesting.
"It results then, from the experiments of Messrs. Hare, Silliman, Clarke, Murray, and Ridolfi, that there is really no substance which is infusible in the degree of heat produced by this kind of blowpipe.