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a talk'? It must be confessed that it has an amazingly moon-hoaxy-air.
Very little dependence is to be placed upon it, in my humble opinion;
and if I were not well aware, from experience, how very easily men of
science are mystified, on points out of their usual range of inquiry,
I should be profoundly astonished at finding so eminent a chemist as
Professor Draper, discussing Mr. Kissam's (or is it Mr. Quizzem's?)
pretensions to the discovery, in so serious a tone.
But to return to the 'Diary' of Sir Humphrey Davy. This pamphlet was not
designed for the public eye, even upon the decease of the writer, as any
person at all conversant with authorship may satisfy himself at once by
the slightest inspection of the style. At page 13, for example, near the
middle, we read, in reference to his researches about the protoxide
of azote: 'In less than half a minute the respiration being continued,
diminished gradually and were succeeded by analogous to gentle pressure
on all the muscles.' That the respiration was not 'diminished,' is not
only clear by the subsequent context, but by the use of the plural,
'were.' The sentence, no doubt, was thus intended: 'In less than half
a minute, the respiration [being continued, these feelings] diminished
gradually, and were succeeded by [a sensation] analogous to gentle
pressure on all the muscles.' A hundred similar instances go to show
that the MS. so inconsiderately published, was merely a rough note-book,
meant only for the writer's own eye, but an inspection of the pamphlet
will convince almost any thinking person of the truth of my suggestion.
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