Newton, Leibnitz, and Boscovich to the Atomic Theory. 69 



identity, and there will therefore be the greatest amount of repulsion. 

 But to repel light powerfully, is to be highly refractive or reflective ; 

 and such, therefore, will this our first species be. It will also obviously 

 be the lightest of insulable bodies. Moreover, its particles must have 

 but a very slender tendency to unite with each other ; for its polar 

 angles are identical, and its equatorial angles differ less from the polar 

 angles than they can in any other molecule m which there is any differ- 

 ence at all. If once invested with their atmospheres, therefore, the 

 particles of this body will be very persistent in the fully insulated or 

 aeriform state. It will also keep true to the law of the compression of 

 aeriforms in an eminent degree ; for no pressure, however great, can 

 impair or transform the structure of its particles. Now, in all these 

 respects it agrees with hydrogen. Should the reader hastily infer from 

 this, its most early genesis, that we should expect an atmosphere of 

 hydrogen, and not that which we have, let it be remembered that we 

 must have oxygen, else we immediately die ; and we cannot have both 

 hydrogen and oxygen, for the first flash of lightning would explode the 

 mixture, and reduce the whole to mere vapour. In reference to higher 

 regions, however, comets, nebulae, &c., the inquiry as to the existence 

 of hydrogen, and that still more elementary species, composed of four 

 aetherial particles, to which we have not here given a name, is open. 

 But on that we do not enter here. 



It is more relevant to our present purpose to remark, that imder the 

 law of assimilation, operating in the presence of the aether upon this 

 molecular species, which we have found to agree, so far as we can reach 

 its properties, with hydrogen, and which we may designate by H, 

 we are led to expect three combinations of it with setherial matter, 

 undistinguishable in the laboratory, perhaps, from pure hydrogen, though 

 all were really to be found there, but differing in important respects 

 both from each other and from their parent. 



Thus, suppose an atom of H, io = 5 to exist 

 under the assimilative influence of some powerfully 

 prolate spindle-shaped or linear form, such as a 

 comet when nearing the sun, or the tissue form- 

 ing the trunk branches or petioles of a plant, 

 it will of course tend, by catalysis, to be assimi- 

 lated in form, that is, to become prolate also ; 

 and this it may accomplish symmetrically, by 

 taking from the ajther an additional particle for 

 each pole. It is then in harmony with its posi- 

 tion. Its form is still generally similar to fig. H, and its weight is 

 now 7. 



