Notices respecting New Booh. 297 



himself expresses it, • to the just logic of chemical philosophy.' The 

 conclusion was acquiesced in by all chemists ; but the question was 

 not the more determined, whether this conclusion was arrived at by 

 the rules of a sound logic or by the admission of an erroneous 

 dogma." 



It certainly required no small degree of assurance to pen a para- 

 graph like this ; the results of " rigid care " on the part of a chemist 

 of the highest reputation, and the belief of others in the correctness 

 of his inference, are in a moment set at nought ; and by what ? by 

 experiment ? no ; but because the Professor has made the astound- 

 ing discovery, that by adding together the numbers 14, 4832 and 

 64-32, or 30 and 96*64, he obtains 126-64. This will appear from 

 his " Table showing the possible derivation of the Simple Bodies of 

 Chemistry from common roots," p. 23. 



Such is the ground, and such are the facts which, in the opinion 

 of Professor Low, "should convince us that the rule which we have 

 adopted is unsound, and is arrived at, not by ' the just logic of chemical 

 philosophy,' but by a chemical dogma, which ought long ere now to have 

 been banished from the science into which it has been introduced." Now 

 this is absolutely monstrous ; here is a person, who, for aught that 

 appears, never performed a chemical experiment in his life, passing 

 the sentence of banishment against the opinion of one of the first 

 chemical philosophers that ever existed. So much for Davy from 

 Professor Low ! 



We remember that Dr. George Fordyce used to say, that when- 

 ever a person was desirous of framing an hypothesis, it was better 

 that he should know nothing of his subject, for then no facts would 

 stand in his way. On this principle, the Professor, for anything that 

 appears to the contrary, may be eminently gifted for the task which 

 he has undertaken. Or we will suppose the Professor, like Davy, to 

 have examined iodine "with rigid care," and to have found it "to 

 resist all the agents which he employed to decompose it," he then pro- 

 bably would have announced an opinion somewhat like this : this body 

 is certainly a compound, because the more I have attempted to re- 

 solve it into two or more kinds of matter, the further have I been re- 

 moved from success. This we have a right to conclude would be 

 the Professor's logic on such an occasion. 



In further elucidation of Professor Low's mode of advancing the 

 science of chemistry by "induction," "analogy," and "reasoning 

 powers," we offer the following choice morsel : — " Now, there are 

 four roots or elements, into one or more of which, we may suppose 

 that all the other bodies may be resolved, namely, hydrogen, carbon, 

 oxygen, and nitrogen, because we know already that these bodies ex- 

 tend throughout both kingdoms of nature, and that a vast number of 

 bodies are derived from them, But as there will be seen good reason 

 for believing, that nitrogen is a compound body, we need not com- 

 plicate our argument by admitting it into the number of assumed 

 elements ; but may proceed at once on the supposition, that all bo- 

 dies may be resolved into three of the number, — hydrogen, carbon, 

 and oxygen." We afterwards find another assumption, namely that 



