‘ 
‘B56 Nature of Calorie. 
cisely where our dim perceptions, or our cruder apparatds, 
come to astand? Have we left nothing for posterity ? From 
' platina to hydrogen, we have descended through a long se~ 
ries of bodies, which have been growing more and more sub- 
tile by imperceptible gradations, and it is not agreeable to. 
the analogy of nature to suppose, that the series terminates 
at so palpable a stage of its progress. In all the depart- 
ments of Natural History, we see a gradation of objects de- 
scending into endless subordination. In the animal creation, 
for example, man begins with the lien or the elephant, and 
arrives at length at the insect, that barely discloses its exis- 
tence when illuminated by the sun beam. Here he makes 
his stand, and proclaims that the series of animalsends. But 
a casual discovery presents him with the microscope ; and 
now a still more exteuded series of animals start into life, 
and new race after race, still diminishing, pass before him, 
their numbers swelling as the. powers of the instrument are 
augmented. Hipparchus might vainly have said, ‘ I have 
counted all the stars.’ But Herschell saw more in the single 
narrow field of his great telescope, than all that Hipparchus 
numbered. Had Herschel been of the same spirit, he might 
have boasted that he had left nothing unseen amid all t 
starry train; but lo! as if to mock the presumption of man, 
n 
Nor, if this should be the case, does any thing seem at pre- 
sent more probable, than that these ultimate agents which are 
concerned in the production of all chemical phenomena, will 
be among the number. 
There are, however, chemists who are unwilling to. ac- 
i e that we know at present nothing respecting the 
eause of heat. A few maintain that we have sufficient rea- 
son to deny its materiality, while a greater number think that 
its materiality is capable of being established by proof. The 
latest attempt that I have seen to establish by argument the 
Notes to Ure’s Chemical Diction i 
2 mre s 4 ary. His observations are 
almost exclusively employed in controyerting the hypothesis 
