398 SCIENTIFIC WRITINGS. 



180 F. of losing indeed a great part of its latent 

 heat of fusion, retained in rapid solidification, and of 

 becoming electrolytically conductive, but with longer 

 continued and higher heating in the vicinity of its 

 melting point, of giving off more latent heat, and 

 then of becoming still better conductive and that 

 metallically - - I found a confirmation of my previously 

 suggested hypothesis, that the electrical resistance of 

 a body is an equivalent for the quantity of heat stored 

 up in it in the sensible as well as in the latent state. 

 Further it seemed to prove that latent heat has a 

 greater power than sensible heat of causing resistance, 

 and that bodies without allotropically latent heat con- 

 duct metallically, and moreover in such a way that 

 the resistance increases uniformly with the temperature 

 reckoning from zero, whilst the resistance - causing 

 influence of allotropically latent heat decreases with 

 rising temperature. 



According to this theory all simple bodies, which 

 are not an allotropic modification of their original 

 metallic primitive state, in which heat has become 

 latent, must conduct metallically, and it is probable 

 that the so-called active state of bodies is nothing else 

 than this state devoid of latent heat, termed by me the 

 metallic, which in semi- and non-metals can only occur 

 in chemical combinations without passing immediately 

 into an allotropic modification, heat becoming latent. 

 According to this hypothesis we have therefore to 

 imagine, that the molecules of all non-metallic solid 

 bodies can assume different positions of stability, corre- 



