332 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [Oct. 



Within our Association-period both the nomenclature of che- 

 mistry and the conception* of the atomic theory have received not 

 indeed a change, but such an addition to its ordinary expression as 

 the more general language and larger meaning of algebra have con- 

 ferred on common arithmetical values. The theory of compound 

 radicals, as these views of Liebig, Dumas, and Hofmann may be 

 justly termed, embraces the consideration of groups of elements- 

 united in pairs by the ordinary law, these groups being for the 

 purpose in hand treated as single elements of combination. The 

 nomenclature which attempts in ordinary words to express these 

 relations grows very unmanageable even in languages more easily 

 capable of polysyllabic combinations than ours ; but symbols of 

 composition — the true language of chemistry — are no more embar- 

 rassed in the expression of these new ideas than are the mathema- 

 tical symbols which deal with operations of much greater com- 

 plexity on quantities more various and more variable, (c) The 

 study of these compound radicals comes in aid of experimental 

 research into those numerous and complex substances which 

 appear as the result of chemical transformations in organic 

 bodies. Thus in some instances the very substances have been 

 recomposed by art which the vital processes are every moment 

 producing' in nature ; in others the steps of the process are clearly 

 traced ; in all the changes become better understood through 

 which so great a variety of substances and structures are yielded 

 by one circulating fluid ; and the result is almost a new branch of 

 animal and vegetable physiology, not less important for the health 

 of mankind than essential to the progress of scientific agriculture. 

 The greater our progress in the study of the economy of 

 nature, the more she unveils herself as one vast whole — one com- 

 prehensive plan — one universal rule, in a yet unexhausted series 

 of individual peculiarities. Such is the aspect of this moving, 

 working, living system of force and law : such it has ever been, 

 if we rightly interpret the history of our own portion of this rich 

 inheritance of mind, the history of that earth from which we 



Delesse, Etudes sur lc Metamorphisme, 1858, and other works. 



Daubree, sur la Relation des Sources Thermales des Plombieres, avec 

 les Filons Metalliferes et la formation des Zeolithes, 1858 ; and other 

 works. 



(c) On the Nomenclature of Organic Compounds, by Dr. Daubeny. 

 Reports of British Association, 1851. 



