On Chemical Philosophy. 53 
blishment with many costly instruments. As the public money 
therefore has paid for these things, the public (I mean the Bri- 
dish public, and not the people in France) have a right to know 
how that money has been expended: and J] am persuaded that 
no scientific person will regret that a portion of the public ex- 
penditure of the country has been appropriated in this way. I 
am sure however that every person will regret that any informa- 
tion upon those subjects, for which he has so dearly paid, should 
be withholden from fis own country and given to another. My. 
Pond must be aware that there are many scientific persons in 
England, who are desirous of seeing a more detailed account of 
the astronomical circle above mentioned, and who cannot gather 
that information from the partial account which he has at pre- 
sent thought fit to publish: and it would have been more satis- 
factory to them to see such a description first published in ¢his 
couvtry, than first to meet with it as an appendage to some of 
the future volumes of the Connaissance des Tems, or as a pro- 
minent article in one of the foreign journals, 
J am, sir, your obedient servant, 
July 14, 1818, ARISTARCHUS, 
VIII. On Chemical Philosophy. By Mr. Martuew ALian, 
Lecturer. 
{Continued from vol. li, p. 432,] 
: Essay VI. 
{ SAID in the last Essay, that it was necessary to be still more 
particular, in order to prove that the differences in phenomena 
arise not from different powers, but from the substances and cir- 
cumstances, and the quantity and intensity of one power acting 
pon or in them ;—that it was necessary to prove, by particular 
detailed explanations, that there is but ‘‘one grand agent in nature, 
which creates or destroys, unites or separates, preserves or diver- 
sifies, the forms of matter.” And what can be more evident } 
Every body, in changing its form of existence, changes also its 
capacity for heat or for this power, or its capability to contain 
or retain a greater or less quantity. The difference of capacity, 
between these different states of existence, is exactly equal to the 
quantity necessary to produce the change, and of course to sup- 
port the change of existence it has itself produced. For instance; 
If one pound of water heated to 172° will only melt one pound 
of ice, and be itself reduced to the same temperature, that of 32°, 
then water at 32° contains 140° more of caloric than ice at the 
sane temperature; and if so, it is evident that 140° of ealoric 
disappear and become latent in the solution and conversion of 
D3 ice 
