250 Intelligence and Miscellaneous Articles. 



nomena in the following light, a clear and evident explanation of 

 them will re8ult. 



A body is composed of contiguous but not continuous parts, and 

 these, instead of being rigid and hard, are eminently compress- 

 ible and elastic, lliese contiguous parts form molecular groups 

 and systems, which may be arranged differently in regard to each 

 other, in virtue of the attractive force acting from molecule to mole- 

 cule, from system to system. In accordance with this view, liquids 

 would be formed by strongly compressed and but slightly adherent 

 molecular groups ; solids, by less strongly compressed but not ad- 

 herent groups ; and lastly, aeriform fluids would be constituted by 

 still less compressed molecular groups, and these much less adherent. 

 If the arrangement of the systems be destroyed, the equilibrium 

 between the attractive and the elastic force disappears ; the internal 

 molecular movement increases, the vibrations augment, the elastic 

 force gains the ascendant, and the matter expands, becomes dissi- 

 pated and attenuated on assuming the elastic state, which state 

 precedes every chemical phaenomenon. 



I have endeavoured on these principles to explain all the phaeno- 

 mena of physics and chemistry, in the same manner as the general 

 laws of mechanics. 



In accordance with this hypothesis, the phsenomena of capillarity 

 are merely a necessary consequence of the expansion of matter at its 

 edges, of the adhesion of the expanded layer to the adjacent wall, 

 and of the force of cohesion exerted between the upper parts of the 

 liquid prism and its base. The limits of this phaenomenon are deter- 

 mined by the equilibrium of the force of adhesion and cohesion with 

 the excess of pressure of the internal upon the external level. The 

 expansive force may be greater or less, according to the nature of 

 the liquid ; it may give rise to the formation of new prisms, which 

 cease to remain suspended when the pressure of the external layer 

 becomes less than the pressure of the liquid outside, which pressure 

 does not correspond to the weight of the entire column of liquid 

 raised, considering that a portion of it is supported by the adherence 

 of the liquid to the adjacent solid walls. 



All electrical, magnetic, thermotic and luminous phaenomena, are 

 finally nothing more than currents, projections of more finely di- 

 vided, rarer and more elastic matter, which by their encounters 

 give rise to new solutions or new combinations, which we call 

 physical, chemical and organoleptic properties. Beyond the animal 

 sphere, we find merely the motion of matter which becomes disag- 

 gregated or recomposed. Those bodies, which have hitherto been 

 called imponderable, dynamides or material forces, are nothing more 

 than the matter itself in the elastic state, which striking against 

 the masses, or penetrating between the different molecular systems, 

 breaks up or alters the primitive arrangement, augments their internal 

 and vibratory motion, and gives rise to new systems and other ar- 

 rangements. 



In nature there is always motion, which is at the same time both 

 the cause and the effect of other motions, by causing the relations 



