Note 407 — Chapter IV · (continued 2)
Reading edition
Babinet, Études et Lectures sur les Sciences d'Observation, ii, p. 225. Our author precedes his account of his method with a complaint which most men who indulge in thinking have occasion to repeat many times in the course of their lives. "I will explain to my readers the construction of artificial fountains according to the plan of the famous Bernard de Palissy, who, a hundred and fifty [three hundred] years ago, came and took away from me, a humble academician of the nineteenth century, this discovery which I had taken a great deal of pains to make. It is enough to discourage all invention when one finds plagiarists in the past as well as in the future!" (P. 224.)