HI: AT. 53 



ultimate particles." But the particles are not always oscillating, 

 there must be a force which initiates the motion. 



We admit that the discovery which elicited the connection 

 ii motion and heat was a great one, but it much resembles 

 that made by Christopher Columbus when he landed on one of 

 the AVest India Islands, and went home proclaiming he had 

 found a great country ; while the vast continent of America lay 

 still beyond his ken. 



If our scientific men possessed half the daring displayed by 

 the followers of Columbus, they would have searched into this 

 theory of motion, indicated by Mayer and others, and by 

 discovering what caused it, a great deal of useless writing, 

 would have been spared the world. For there is this bane 

 connected with science, that while we have trumpeters and 

 drummers innumerable, we have no real leaders in it at the pre- 

 sent time. There is not sufficient ambition among scientific men 

 generally, to make researches, and hew out paths of their own, 

 they would rather, like most of our professors and teachers of 

 science, be flunkies to an eminent man's opinion, than ride in 

 carriages of their own. 



Heat is produced in apparently three different ways, but we 

 show that the action of matter is the same in alL 



Firstly, Natural heat, caused by the natural motion and 

 reciprocal action of atoms, as explained in the preceding chapter 

 on chemical action, or such as is known as animal heat. 



udly. Heat given out by combustion, which is the result 

 of an excess of the same action, when the atoms of the two 

 classes are of a more favourable character to produce heat, and 

 in a more favourable condition and position to reciprocate or act 

 under a changed or different form. 



