122 
but, as it recognizcd a false principle, 
and led to false analogies and various 
incongruities in reasoning, it has now 
ceased to be used by any well-edu- 
cated person, although the vulgar still 
recognize the term, as well as the 
power, which it originally expressed. 
Just so it is with the terms ATTRACc- 
TION, REPULSION, AFFINITY, and the 
like. ‘They have for ages been used 
as expressive of natural, innate, and 
universal properties of bodies. No 
one has doubted of the power of bo- 
dies under different circumstances to 
attract and repel one ancther; and 
every work of chemistry speaks with- 
out qualification of various kinds of 
affinity. Thus insensate inert masses, 
which know nothing of each other’s 
quantities, are almost universally be- 
lieved to be able to move one another 
from the opposite part to that in which 
each is situated, by a power of aitrac- 
tion, said to act in proportion to their 
quantities ;—other bodies. push one 
another away ;—and others havesingle, 
double, and compound affinities or 
“kings for one another, and aversions 
to other bodies. This is the language 
and the faith of every learned society 
and university in Europe. 
But it has lately been incontestibly 
ascertained and proved, that ali these 
phenomena, like suction, have their 
sufficient general and specific causes, 
and that no attraction, repulsion, or 
qffimty, is either concerned or is ne- 
cessary: that the notions of such 
powers are chimeras of ignorance and 
superstition, and, consequently, the 
terms expressing them ought, like 
suction, to be exploded from the nomen- 
clature of any philosophy which claims 
the respect of mankind. 
They not only disgrace philosophy, 
but injure and arrest all enquiry; and 
they lead tu more false analogies and 
incengruities than even the term suc- 
tien. Thus a principle of wiiversal 
attraction renders necessary an univer- 
sal projectile force, and thereby in- 
volves pbysics and nature in the most 
absurd complexity. It mixes, too, 
with all reasonings on these subjects, 
and leads to false and unsatisfactory 
solutions of phenomena. 
But attraction must not be con- 
founded with the scholastic name of 
weight, or central momentum, called 
GRAVITATION. The two-fold motions 
of a planet necessarily confer an im- 
pulse or momentum of all its parts to- 
Wards its centre ; and hence ail bodies 
Erroneous Language of Physics. ° 
(Sept. 1 
upon a planet, as patients of its gene- 
ral motions, have a local or planetary 
gravitation, weight, or central mo- 
mentum. But, as the cause is local, 
and as a local cause has no universal 
effect, so the phrase “ universal gravi= 
tation” is an incongruity essentially as 
absurd as the terms attraction, repul- 
sion, affinity, or suction. 
Birmingham ; July 25. XX. 
—_— 
To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine. 
SIR, 
AVING seen in a Portsmouth 
paper, the Hampshire Telegraph, 
of yesterday, a letter from Ascension, 
stating that the party stationed at that 
island procure fresh water from a 
spring nearly five miles off, and which 
is conveyed that distance, over rocks 
and stones, on men’s shoulders, I 
deem it my duty to state, for the in- 
formation of seamen, and the public at 
large, that nature furnishes the means 
to obtain good fresh water on a sandy 
beach by percolation, which process 
(like the water-spout and clouds,) not 
only separates the saline parficles from 
sca-water, but divests that fluid of the 
bitter disagreeable taste, so as to ren- 
der it more pure and free from earthy 
salts than river-water. In corrobora- 
tion of which, I completed the ship un- 
der my command with water so ob- 
tained, on the Malabar coast, when on 
my way from Bombay to China, by the 
eastern passage; and, on my return to. 
England by the Pacific, I watered by 
the same means in the Straits of Sapy, 
where the fresh water flowed and 
ebbed with the tide; and of the excel- 
lence of such water it may suffice to 
say, that I was thirteen months and a 
half actually at sea, out of fifteen, and 
lost only one man, who was not in 
good health at coming on-board. 
By this process of nature, the roots 
of the most valuable species of palm 
are enabled to extract fresh water 
from the sea for their support; indeed 
the cocoa-nuts produced on low sandy 
islands, overflowed by the sea, are the 
best; and, as these valuable trees are 
applied to so many useful purposes in 
the east, they might, with the melory- 
tree, (which is superior to the bread- 
fruit,) be easily cultivated at Ascen- 
sion. 
From the ravages made by dry-rot, 
requiring ninety-six ships to be built 
to replace those that prematurely de- 
cay, and from being informed that the, 
infection has spread to the Minden, 
and 
