adhesion and cohesion, attraction and contraction, dilatation and repulsion, and of centrality from them all.

Ibid., p. 74. Note.

Notwithstanding mercury receives such a degree of cold, its great separability and fluidity prevents its congealing. Mr. Boyle tried various ways to bring it to freeze, by making an extream cold, and exposing an exceedingly thin skin of mercury thereto, but without effect.

A warning against the use of the word "extreme;" whereas we now know, that even that degree of cold which is compatible with human life will freeze quicksilver.

Ibid., p. 120. Note.

A fluid seed seems a contradiction. True, a seed may be contained in a fluid vehicle; which we actually suppose is the case in animals; but the proper seed or stamen itself, inevitably must be a solid. This is obvious from the very notion of a seed, which is nothing but a little organised body, wherein all the parts of the future production are contained in small; the production itself is only the seed enlarged, so as to show its several parts to the eye. But fluidity is inconsistent with any such organism; a fluid is a body whose parts are either actually in continual motion, or at least are liable to be continually moved by the smallest force; and how can the structure and arrangement of parts, which constitute an animal or vegetable, persist in so slippery a thing, where the situation of the parts is continually interchangeable? "Tis no more possible for the seed, ex. gr. of a tree, to be fluid, and yet remain a seed, than for the tree itself to be fluid while a tree; so that the seminal origin of stones does not seem tenable.

This question has more recently been a subject of

controversy between the adherents of the justly celebrated John Hunter, and the no less deservedly celebrated — Blumenbach, who has adopted this argument, viz., the inconsistency of fluidity with organisation, in the very conceptions of the two terms. But I doubt the validity of the argument. The conception of a fluid is not a, or the, fluid; but a logical abstract. First it must be inquired whether there exists in nature any substance adequate to the generic definition? and if this were affirmed, yet secondly, whether the blood, semen, &c., nay, whether the whole of an organised body during life, be not gradative media between solid figure. accurately (rigid) and fluid? It is clear to me that nothing vital is properly either rigid or fluid, but mere approximations to the one or the other, either of which realised would be death. If a perfect fluid be defined as quantitative indifference, a fixed body or solid, as quantitative difference, a vital organism must be defined participially as a continuous differencing of the indifference, equal to a continued indifferencing of the difference. Without the former, no figure, without the latter, no life. The whole controversy, therefore, is resolved into a pseudological logomachy, or a dispute about words, from a misappropriation of the words in dispute.

Ibid., p. 125.

It must be owned, however, that spirit of wine, which is a sulphur, is miscible with water; but it is owing to this, that the sulphur in spirit of wine is so changed, and its parts so attenuated and divided, as to insinuate themselves among the parts of the water, where they would not otherwise be admitted.

A good instance of a subjective and perhaps

arbitrary definition understood in a term with the concrete represented by the same term: as sulphur with sulphur, i. e., Brimstone.*

Ibid., p. 126.

The second is arsenic, the most fatal of the whole tribe, as destroying all animals, both man and beast; which the word itself imports, being compounded of avǹp, man, and vikaw, I

Overcome.

Then it must have been andronicon.

ĭcum.

Even from

apoŋv masculus, it would be arsenicum, not arsenProbably it is simply from ǎponv-the masculine, i. e., the active, penetrating.

Ibid., p. 126. Note.

Sulphur contains some parts which render it more inflammable than either nitre or oil; and yet abounds with acid and vitriolic particles, which strongly resist the flame in several other bodies; the fire of sulphur, besides its common effect, seen in matches, in another capacity, acts by means of its acidity upon some metals, especially iron; and also on red rose-leaves, which are turned white by its fumes.-Boyle, Useful. of Exper. Philos.

Instance for Logic. Here Fumes are taken= Sulphur, without proof. Now we know that the Fumes are Sulphur + Oxygen; and B. ought to have seen that the Fumes might be Sulphur + ×, or an unknown something.

* A chemical theorist might even now so extend the use of the word sulphureous, as to include oil and alcohol, as the two antithetic proportions of carbon and hydrogen; but in no state of the science could he find an excuse for defining a genus by one of its species.

Ibid., p. 236.

Thus they who dig mines, wells, &c., constantly observe, that while they are yet but a little below the surface, they find it a little cool; as they proceed lower, it grows much colder, as being then beyond the reach of the sun's heat; insomuch that water will freeze almost instantaneously, and hence the use of ice-houses, &c.

Excellent examples might be selected for my Practical Logic, de terminis haud adhuc exhaustis, or A B C D taken as A=A.

NOTES WRITTEN IN A JOURNAL OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY, CHEMISTRY, AND THE ARTS.*

Vol. XXII. A Letter on the Basaltic Country in Ireland. By William Richardson, D.D.

Page 162. Note.

By the word Nature, which frequently occurs in the course of this memoir, I always mean, according to Ray's definition, the wisdom of God in the creation of the world.

Far better and more reverential, as well as more correspondent to the phenomena, would the following definition of Nature be, Me saltèm judice: The law, or constructive powers, excited in matter by the influence of God's Spirit and Logos.

P.S.—We have no other reason for continuing the inchoative acts of the Spirit and Word after the creative week, than as all existence is grounded in

*Edited by William Nicholson.

Ibid., p. 58.

Quicksilver evidently shows gold in the middle, or body of it, silver at top, or in the face, and a corrosive at bottom; accordingly all the adepts say of mercury that it is gold at heart, whence its heaviness; that its outside is silver, whence its white colour; but that there is a pernicious corrosive sulphur adhering to it, denoted by the cross; that if its brightness and its corrosive could be taken away, it would remain gold; that the quantity of sulphur is here so great, as to render it wholly combustible by fire; that the more 'tis burnt, the nearer it comes to be gold; and that were it perfectly calcined and purified, and its colour changed, it would be gold.

Here the sulphur must be supposed to mean the excess of light, light not neutralised by gravitation, super-oxygenated.-From this point of view, viz., that the thing (phenomenon fixum sive mortuum) was taken symbolically for the powers, and the materia (phenomenon fluxionale) as the magnetic and electrical materiæ, the alchemists may perhaps be decipherable into intelligible notions.

Ibid., p. 60. Note.

Again, clay does not show the least sign of any metal, work it how you will, without mixing; but add linseed oil to it, and by fire you will have a metal, which is no other than real iron.

The clay of course contained the iron, the linseed oil supplying the carbon for its separation. But with regard to plants and to the blood, it is more doubtful, it would be so very difficult to weigh with sufficient accuracy the various volatile products, with the oxygen used in the burning.