360 CALORIFICATION. 



bined with them becomes deposited from them, 

 in the form of rain. The whole of this pheno- 

 menon, is exactly similar to what takes place in 

 the upper regions of the air, by the effect of 

 lightning* 



* It has been owing to this ultimate effect, that chemists 

 have been led to conclude, that these airs are the elements 

 out of which water is constituted and formed ;^-that they 

 bear, in fact, the same relation to water, as cause does to 

 effect, that a whole does to a part. If this conclusion were 

 as true as it is false, if water were the effect produced, and 

 air the cause producing ; the consequence would be, that the 

 matter of the producing cause, (i. e. air,) must be sufficient in 

 bulk and quantity, to account for the whole quantity of the 

 effect produced, (i. e. the water.) I would then ask, whether 

 it is not prima facie, a violation of common sense to suppose, 

 that all the water which is kept suspended in the air, in the 

 form of atmosphere and clouds, all the water which flows in 

 rivers and lakes, and which exists to an unfathomable depth 

 in the ocean, can be the product of these airs. It might as 

 reasonably be supposed, that all the water in the ocean is 

 formed out of the rivulets and brooks, instead of the waters 

 of these being parts of which the ocean is the whole. That 

 the quantity of air is altogether insufficient to acconnt for all 

 the water which actually exists, is further proved by com- 

 paring the relative densities of each, as ascertained by the 

 relative degrees of gravity in each. The relative gravity of 

 water to oxygen gas, is as 1 to 1,000; of water to hydrogen, 

 as 1 to 13,000 ; so that 1,000 cubic inches of the former, and 

 13,000 of the latter, by combination, produce one ounce of 

 water only ; not the superior density of the one, and the ra- 

 rity of the other, must be taken to the account, but the 

 extent and limitations of each also : although we cannot fa- 



