226 INDUCTIVE AFFINITY. 



in some salts, and then appears as a binary compound, or the 

 oxide of a new basyle, which is ethyl plus an atom of water. 

 It is not improbable then that under the influence of a powerful 

 induction, compounds may admit of different dispositions of 

 their molecules ; that the strong chlorous affinity r of a contigu- 

 ous polar molecule may develope near it a zincous element, in 

 the most complicated substance. 



It comes to be a most interesting subject of inquiry, which I 

 trust is not beyond our reach, what relation have the atoms of a 

 metallic element of the circle to each other, when not in a polar 

 condition ? The relation I imagine to be that of combination. 

 Their atoms assume so readily the binary or saline arrangement 

 under induction, that they may be supposed already to possess 

 it. Their atoms may be associated in a congeries, forming a 

 highly complex molecule, the prototype of a saline body, in 

 which not only the salt-radical and basyle have their representa- 

 tive atoms of metal, but even the elements of constitutional 

 water, and of water of crystallization. Numerous and most in- 

 teresting inquiries are suggested by the possible existence of 

 such a molecular structure of the metal. As salts diifer from 

 each other in the number and disposition of these accompanying 

 bodies, a sulphate of zinc in its water of crystallization, for in- 

 stance, from a chloride of the same metal, so one metal may 

 diifer from another in the arrangement which it affects, or salt 

 it resembles. The molecular arrangement in a metal may even 

 change with its temperature ; such arrangements, and the 

 changes they undergo, occasioning a variable inductive action of 

 dissimilar metals in contact upon each other's molecules, and 

 giving rise^ in particular > to the phenomena of thermo-electri- 

 city. 



But the facility with which the polar condition of the mole- 

 cules of a metal may be reversed, with a change in the direction 

 in the induction affecting it, forbids us to suppose that any par- 

 ticular molecular arrangement of a metal is constant. The metal 

 zinc may have one arrangement which it affects when under no 

 foreign influence, (an arrangement, it may be, impressed upon 

 that metal in its reduction from the ore, by the chemical agen- 

 cies then at work), but under the influence of different exciting 

 fluids, it must assume different arrangements^ analogous to those 

 of the exciting fluid, at one time representing a chloride of zinc, 

 and at another time a sulphate, or reflecting the molecular con- 



