Dr. Bowditch, President of the American Academy. lv 
discoveries announced in the Vew Theory have not in reality 
advanced this branch of science. This portion of Dr. Bowditch’s 
work, when published, will, in the opinion of our mathematicians, 
attract the notice of men of science in Europe as strongly, per- 
haps, as any part of his labors. 
When I briefly ask your attention to one or two results of this 
investigation, and their connexion, —not obvious at first view, — 
with other branches of science, it will not cause any emotion of 
surprise, that this curious subject should have so deeply engaged 
the attention of the author and his commentator. 
From these investigations, says La Place, “we perceive the 
agreement which is found between the capillary phenomena and the 
results of the law of attraction of the particles of bodies, decreasing 
with extreme rapidity so as to become insensible at the least dis- 
tances that are perceptible to our senses. This law of nature is the 
source of chemical affinities ; like gravity, it is not arrested at the 
surfaces of bodies, but penetrates them, acting beyond the point of 
contact, but at imperceptible distances. Upon this depends the 
influence of masses in chemical phenomena, or the capacity for satu- 
ration, whose effects have been so beautifully developed by M. Ber- 
thollet. Thus two acids, acting upon the same base, are divided 
in proportion to their affinities with it; which would not take place 
if this affinity acted only when in contact; for then the most power- 
ful acid would retain the whole base. The figure of the elementary 
particles, the heat, and other causes, being combined with this law, 
modify the effects of it. The discussion of these causes, and of the 
circumstances which develope them, is the most delicate part of 
Chemistry, and constitutes the philosophy of that science, making 
known to us as much as possible the intimate nature of the bodies, 
the law of the attractions of their particles, and that of the foreign 
attractions which operate upon them.” La Place adds afterwards, 
