Blowpipe Analysis

Abstract

THANKING you sincerely for the very well written and not altogether uncandid (if rather severe) review of my lately published work on this subject (NATURE, vol. xiii. p. 164), against any part of which I would not at present presume to appeal, I would ask for a corner of your valuable space to explain, with regard to “the production of a precipitate” of sodium sulphide by the addition of a drop of water to a fused mass of soda with a sulphide on aluminium plate, that the term “precipitate” undoubtedly used by me (as the reviewer says so) is obviously a “slip of the pen,” for there can be no room to precipitate anything in a drop of water from a fused mass on aluminium plate.