On definite Proportions. 249 
gams, or erystallized alloys, which are sometimes obtained in pu~ 
tifying metals by assaying them. The union by fusion is analo- 
gous to the solution of a salt in water; and may be effected in 
almost all proportions: but when a salt erystallizes, a definite 
combination with water takes place ; and when crystalline alloys 
are formed in the gradual cooling of mixtures, the part, still fluid 
being pditred off, the crystallized part exhibits a fixed and deti- 
nite combination. When a combination of two metals is eapa- 
ble of affording saline bases by oxidation, each part, in its con- 
version into a protoxide, commonly takes up the same quantity 
of oxygen. The arbor Diane affords an example of such a com- 
bination which is easily examined. When a compound contams 
several metals, it may happen that some of the multipliers may 
be very large. It is difficult to obtain such combinations in a 
state of purity; and I must defer, for thé present, the publicatiori 
of the few experiments which I have hitherto made on them. 
The combinations of some combustible substances with oxides, 
for instance those of sulphur, sulphuretted hydrogen, béracium, 
and telluretted hydrogen, with alkalis and alkaline earths, follow 
the same laws, as if they were combined with the metallic ra- 
dicals of the alkalis or earths without oxygen ; or as if they were 
united with oxysen, and entered into combination, as acids and 
oxides, with the alkalis or earths. P 
‘In these few lines, we have gone through the wholé structure 
of inorganic nature, and have seen, how it may be reduced to a 
few very simple principles. Oxygen, the only absolutely [nega- 
live] substance in all nature, is every where the standard, by 
which the proportions between the component parts of al] com- 
binations may be measured. From the existence of such a com- 
mon measuré, it follows, as a necessary conséquence, that com- 
pound bodies, when they mutually decompose each other, never, 
or at least very seldom, set at liberty a single atom of thei com- 
ponent parts; that neutral salts, for example, decompose each 
other without losing their neutral condition ; and that sulphurets 
decompose water without disengaging hydrogen. 
It is unnecéssary to expatiate lere cn the additional import- 
ance which chemistry gains, as a science, by such a reduction of 
its results to mathentatical principles. ‘This is however still but 
an inconsiderable step towards the mathematical perfection of 
the science; and it requires the united and powerful exertions of 
all chenucal philosophers, to bring it nearer and nearer to the 
elevated rank, which it inay be hoped that it will ultimately at- 
tain in the system of human knowledge. 
LII. New 
