ON EQUIVOCAL GENERATION. 129 



it counteracts) be denied, all changes that take place contrary 

 to the observed analogy of nature must be events without a 

 cause; and if one such event can take place, any others might, 

 and consequently the whole system might have had no supe- 

 rior designing cause ; and if there be any such thing as atheism, 

 this is certainly it. 



Dr. Darwin speaks of his organic particles as possessed of 

 certain appetencies, or powers of attraction. But whence came 

 these powers, or any others, such as those of electricity, mag- 

 netism, &c. ? These powers discover as much wisdom, by their 

 adaptation to each other, and their use in the general system, 

 as the organic bodies which he supposes them to form ; so that 

 the supposition of these powers, which must have been impart- 

 ed ab extra, only removes the difficulty he wishes to get quit 

 of one step farther, and there it is left in as much force as ever. 

 There are still marks of design, and therefore the necessity of 

 a designing cause. 



No. XXV. 



Observations on the Discovery of Nitre, in common Salt, which had 

 been frequently mixed with Snow, in a Letter to Dr. Wistar, from 

 J. Priestley, L. L. D. F. R. S. 



Read, December 2, 1803. 

 PEAR SIR, 



WHEN I had the pleasure of seeing you at Northumber- 

 land, I mentioned a fact which I had just observed, but which 

 appeared to me so extraordinary, that I wished you not to 

 speak of it till I had more completely ascertained it. It was 

 the conversion of a quantity of common salt into nitre. But 

 having seen, in the last Medical Repository, an observation of 

 Dr. Mitchell's, which throws some light upon it, I think it 

 best upon the whole to acquaint experimentalists in general 

 with all that I know of the matter ; that, as the experiments 

 must be made in the winter, they may take advantage of that 

 which is now approaching. 



T 



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