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 saltem 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.

the Abysmal Aseity, the Divine Nature as invisibly distinguished from the Divine Personëity.

A Letter on Comets, addressed to Mr. Bode, Astronomer Royal at Berlin.

Ibid., p. 210.

These oyster-shells acquire different properties in this respect, according to the degree of calcination, or some other unknown circumstance. I have seen them emit red, green, and yellow light; but they never shine again, each with its own colour, except from the immediate action of the solar rays; and each single-coloured ray causes them to emit the same colour, but more faintly, the ray of their own colour having no advantage over the rest. Hence, I infer that the rays of the sun produce a decomposition in these calcined substances, in consequence of which they give out the light that entered into their composition.

In what way are we to conceive the matter of light (solar rays) to produce a decomposition or extrication of matter of light (=rays chemically combined with matter not light)? Not by homogeneous attraction, for the extrication continues after the removal of the solar rays, i.e., the attracting substances. By the motion, then, of the solar rays exciting correspondent motions in the calcined shells? -and what else is meant by vibrations? Mem.: Experim. with various instruments (musical) of glass and steel on the Bononian stone, calcined oystershells, &c.

Ibid., p. 212.

The particles of the fluid of the tail, as they are detached from the comet, possess the same projectile movement with it, and in the same direction. Accordingly they must continue to follow it. But if they extend very far, that is to say, if

the tail become very long, the particles that proceed the furthest, continuing to move with the same velocity, but in a larger orbit, must have a less angular movement.

Bode, in this very ingenious speculation, assumes the absence of any perceptible action of gravity in this more refined and uncombining sort of electric fluid. If so, how can the particles, self-projected from the comet, in the direction opposite to that in which the comet is moving, possess the same projectile movement? I ask formâ pauperis, not ad confutandum. A stone thrown from a coach in full motion, I know, will follow the coach, or rather accompany it. But would a body projected from a pistol do so? i.e., supposing the earth's gravity removed. And the tail has been measured at a hundred millions of miles !!

What a prodigious idea-an outline of motion=A extending 100,000,000 of miles, and in the direction. U, while all the area included, with exception of 500 or 1000 miles, is filled by particles moving in the opposite direction X ! Query-would not the perpetual evolution of the phosphorescent vapour keeping up a continuum from the evaporating disc, sunfro, to the end of the tail-like smoke issuing from the stern-holes of a vessel sailing against the wind-supply a less startling hypothesis? The smoke of a steam-boat for instance. The expansive, or, more probably, the self-projective power of the cometary vapour =p would be instead of the wind=w.—p: vapour::w: m.

An Essay on Electrical Attractions and Repulsions.

By Mr.

Ibid., p. 315.

We see above, that the author requires the ball of glass to

be very thin; this is a necessary condition for producing the rotatory and revolving motion, for everything made of glass in this state is moved by the slightest electric action: it kindles, as it were, like charcoal before the blow-pipe; and being moved in one point, the neighbouring points tend by affinity to carry themselves in succession to the centre of activity.

This, the most important of all, is so expressed as to be utterly unintelligible. What does "it" mean? and "tend by affinity to carry themselves?" Does the writer mean that what each point would do separately, but which neither (no one) can do, manifests itself in the motion of the whole as the representative of all? This would be something could it be proved.

Vol. XXVI. On the Heat produced by Friction.

By Dr. Haldat.
Page 31.

The property of friction to develope heat had long been known; but this fact, so deserving of attention, had not yet been subjected to proper examination. Count Rumford having made a blunt borer turn in a brass cylinder immersed in water, obtained from it a quantity of heat so disproportionate to anything the brass could have lost, that he thought himself warranted to infer, that this heat could not have arisen from any condensation of the metal, but must have been produced by the agitation of the particles communicated to the water, in the manner of sound.

A striking and beautiful instance of the theory of equation, arising in the attempt to objectionise powers by substituting the sensuous products as their representatives. An hypothetic fluid, or an hypothetic motion, are really the same object in the mind—in the one, we borrow the void by abstracting the act

from the image, in the other by abstracting the image from the act.

Analysis of the Galvanic Pile. By J. A. De Luc, Esq. F.R.S. Part I.

Ibid., p. 131.

I dare not doubt the substantial merits of a naturalist so highly admired as De Luc is, by so competent a judge as Blumenbach. But there is a complexity in all De Luc's experiments, with a multiplicity in his data, rendered more hopeless by the absence of ideas (or first principles) that for me amounts in the effect to positive entanglement. If he means to prove that chemismus, or the power of composition and decomposition exercised by bodies on each other, is not the same as the electrical, he is right; and Davy carried his anticipation too far. But if De Luc meant, as he does, that the electrical power is the property of a peculiar fluid, or rather but another word for the presence of that fluid, and therefore as diverse from chemical agency as from the ponderable bodies, the properties of which are denoted thereby, and that the chemical agency is as independent of the electrical as the electrical of it, he is far astray, and deduces a falsity from a fiction. For his electrical fluid is a mere picture-word of the fancy, a short-hand hieroglyphic mark or memento of a class and series of phenomena, a generic name for a certain set of changes substituted and passed off for their common cause. Chemismus is the third and synthetic power, magnetism being the thetic and the + and — electricity the antithetic: while galvanism is the transition of electricity into chemismus, or the co-aduration of magnetism and electricity. As depth to length and breadth, so chemismus to

R