296 Notices respecting New Books. 



be treated as a separate system, and as each will produce an 

 equal number of synthemes, these being taken onewith another, 

 will furnish just as many unipartite synthemes of the whole 

 system as there are synthemes due to each part. Thus then 

 the synthematic resolution of the modulus 2m x p may be 

 made to depend on the synthematization of 2 m and the cy- 

 clothematization of p. This has been already shown (what- 

 ever m may be) for the case of p being a prime number ; but 

 I proceed now to extend the rule to the more general case of 

 p being any number whatever. 



[To be continued.] 



XLV. Notices respecting New Boohs. 



An Inquiry into the Nature of the Simple Bodies of Chemistry. By 



David Low, F.R.S.E., Professor of Agriculture in the University 



of Edinburgh. 

 JJIAT experimentum, says Bacon, but the author of this work on a 

 subject fundamentally experimental, says fiat hypothesis, and he 

 has accordingly produced a work which may be considered as a ca- 

 ricature of the ancient doctrine of sulphur, salt and mercury ; a more 

 correct title to Professor Low's work would have been, Experiment 

 exploded, or Fancy versus Fact. Dr. Brown may now hide his di- 

 minished head ; he merely attempted to prove, and to do so by ex- 

 periment, that one element was convertible into another ; but Pro- 

 fessor Low, without detailing a single experiment, either good, bad, 

 or indifferent, has arrived at the following conclusions : — " I pro- 

 pose," he says, " to show, that we are not entitled to regard these 

 bodies as elementary or simple, because we have been unable to 

 overcome the affinities of their constituent parts ; that they cannot 

 be separated, as natural products, from the bodies which we know 

 to be compound ; and that all the phenomena of chemical actions 

 may be equally explained, by assuming the existence of three simple 

 bodies, or two, or one, as of any greater number." — Preface, p. 1 . He 

 then proceeds to describe his method of arriving at conclusions : " We 

 have," says he, " other means of investigation than the processes of 

 the laboratory, for conducting us to truths in science. We have induc- 

 tion and analogy, without which even experiment would fail to con- 

 duct us to the discovery of natural laws ; " and yet with the aid of 

 these perfect conductors, our Professor, as proved by the passage just 

 before quoted, has not determined, which he might as well have 

 done, whether there exist " three simple bodies, or two or one." 



Our headlong Professor, by a flourish of his goose-quill, then pro- 

 ceeds in a manner winch we really know not how to describe as less 

 than impertinent, to demolish the opinion of Sir H. Davy on the sub- 

 ject of chemical elements. 



The Professor says, that Davy, having examined iodine with "rigid 

 care," and " finding it to resist all the agents which he employed 

 to decompose it, pronounced it to be a simple body, according, as he 



