Notices respecting New Books. 439 



ford's notion that it is not a specific fluid. The Bavarian 

 Count however goes further, and conipares light to sound ; 

 but Sir H. does^ not include soimd in his radiant matter, 

 and if light he matter at all, it cannot he considered as per- 

 fectly analogous to sound. There is also much reason to 

 doubt the soundness of the Count's doctrine of light, as 

 his lamp, which he presented to the Royal Society, has 

 proved by experience totally inadequate to the purpose of 

 emitting li^ht. His series of burners contiguous to each 

 other may possibly have illuminated his own imagination; 

 but ihey have failed to enlightjen the presiding room of the 

 Eoyal Society. 



Empyreal or undecompounded substances that support 

 combustion constitute the author's third division. In con- 

 siderins their combinations with each other. Sir H. shows, 

 that although " almost all cases of vivid chemical action 

 are connected with the increase of temperature of the act- 

 ing bodies, and a greater radiation of heat from them, and 

 in a number of instances, light is also produced; yet no 

 pecidiar substance or form of matter is necessary for the 

 effect, and that it is a general result of the actions of any 

 substances possessed of strong chemical attractions or dif- 

 ferent electrical relations, which takes place in all cases 

 where an intense and violent motion can be conceived to 

 be communicated to the corpuscles of bodies." The 

 strength of the attraction determines the rapidity of com- 

 bination, and the latter the intensity of heat and light. 

 This is a much more simple and more natural exposition 

 of the actions of matter, than the supposed legerdemain 

 operations of phlogiston or oxvgen, which have been so 

 confidently maintained by theorists. Many hitherto unde- 

 compounded bodies, which cannot easily be supposed to 

 contain oxgyen, produce heat and light by their mutual 

 chemical action ; such are potassium in combining with 

 arsenic and tellurium, and sulphur with certain metals be- 

 come ignited by their union. Oxygen and chlorine or 

 oxy muriatic gas are the substances that support combus- 

 tion, and here considered as undecomposed or simple ele- 

 ments, in the present state of our knowledge. 



In the fourth division, on ijndecompounded non-metallic 

 inflannnable or acidiferoiis substances, are hydrogen, azote, 

 sulphur, phoshorus, carbon, and boracium or boron, all of 

 which " are capable of coiiibiiiing with oxygen, and all ex- 

 cept azote and charcoal with chlorine." 'i'he latter excep- 

 tion, such is the rapid march of the author's discoveries, 

 E e 4 is 



