THE 



EDINBURGH NEW 



PHILOSOPHICAL JOURNAL, 



On Isomeric Transmutation, and the Views recently published 

 concerning the compound nature of Carbon^ Silicon, and 

 Nitrogen. By George Wilson, M.D., Lecturer on Che- 

 mistry, Edinburgh. Communicated by the Author.* 



I propose, in the following Memoir, to offer some observa- 

 tions on the views recently published by Dr Samuel Brown» 

 Mr Knox, and Mr Rigg, concerning the compound nature of 

 silicon, nitrogen, and carbon r Before entering, however, at 

 any length on the discussion of these, I would consider, very 

 briefly, some points connected with the general question of 

 the simplicity and unity of matter. 



The great majority of chemists acknowledge the existence 

 of some 55 simple or elementary substances. These are 

 declared to be simple, not in virtue of any test of simplicity 

 which the chemist has discovered and applied to them, but 

 solely because they resist the decomposing or modifying action 

 of all the forces which are, or at least are known to be, at 

 man's disposal. The chemist, as it were, begins with the 

 globe itself, and breaks it down into some thousand organic 

 and inorganic compounds ; these, in their turn, he resolves into 

 some hundred less complex substances ; and the latter, last 

 of all, into the 55 bodies which are called simple. Here his 

 analysis, in the meanwhile, has ended ; all the forces which 

 are at his command, for the modification of matter, having 



* This memoir contains nearly verbatim the substance of a lecture 

 delivered on 6tli May 1844. 



VOL. XXXVII. NO. LXXIII. ^JULY 1844. A 



