184: 



PROPORTIONS DETERMINATE. 



F-opor- For the sake of such as may wish to employ those some examples, according to which 

 tiuns, numbers in exhibiting the composition of saline bo- may be compounded. 

 we shall add the following Table, containing 



all the other salts Propor- 

 tions, 



Determi- 

 nate. 



But we have still to discuss a very important point 

 in regard to the corpuscular hypothesis, and its appli- 

 cation to observed facts. Admitting that bodies are 

 composed of entire atoms, in all the following modes : 

 I A for example with 1 A, 2 A with 3 B, 3 A with 

 4 B, or 5, or 7, or 8, or 9 B, 9 A with 10 B, and lastly 

 99 A with 100 B ; it follows, that combinations may 

 take place according to an almost infinite number of 

 proportions, the differences of which would finally be- 

 come such, that no analysis could be exact enough to 

 discover them. This, however, does not, in fact, take 

 place; consequently the molecules cannot combine, (at 



least in the case of inorganic substances,) in all num- 

 bers whatever ; and, therefore, it is necessary to in- 

 quire what are the proportions, according to which the 

 molecules of elementary bodies are found actually com- 

 bined. On surveying the analyses hitherto made of 

 inorganic substances, Berzelius thinks he has found 

 that nearly all of them are compounded in such a way, 

 that one of the elements occurs only in a single mole- 

 cule ; and from this fact he has drawn the conclusion, 

 that such substances are characterized in their compo- 

 sition by the circumstance of one element, in compari- 

 son with the rest, always entering by a single molecule, 



